THE  WILL 

of 

THE  PEOPLE 


BY 

FRANCIS  SULLIVAN 


LOS  ANGELES 

THE  RAY  PUBLISHING  CO. 

1919 


GIFT   OF 


THE  WILL 

of 

THE  PEOPLE 


BY 

FRANCIS  SULLIVAN 


LOS  ANGELES 

THE  RAY  PUBLISHING  CO. 

1919 


Copyright,  1919,  by  The  Ray  Publishing  Co. 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 


Reflections  on  an  Unfinished  Task 


CONTENTS 
Chap.  Page 

I      A  Strong  Castle  Without  Windows 3 

II      The  Penalty  of  a  Low,  or  No  Standard  1  2 

III  Superiorities  and  Inferiorities 19 

IV  Nationalism  and   Internationalism 25 

V      The  State  and  Education 33 

VI      An  Injurious  Conception  of  the  Func- 
tions of  the  State 46 

VII      Other  Things  We  Forgot 55 

VIII      Patrons  of  Art  and  Letters 62 

IX      The  Eternal  in  Time 70 

X     The  State  and  Religion 78 


415614 


"~Un  livre  est  une  lettre  ecrite  &  tous  les  amis 
inconnus  que  Von  a  dans  le  monde." 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

CHAPTER  I 
A  STRONG  CASTLE  WITHOUT  WINDOWS 

The  world  at  large  seems  now  more  disposed 
than  ever  before  to  enter  into  an  examination  of 
the  democratic  form  of  government  with  a  view 
to  practice. 

Many  of  the  advantages  of  democracy  are  quite 
obvious.  It  is  agreeable  to  the  mind  of  man  to 
conceive  that  he  is  governing  himself.  It  adds  a 
good  deal  of  dignity  to  the  part  he  plays  in  the 
world.  He  is,  in  truth,  at  length  conceded  to  be 
a  rational  animal  who  may  be  entrusted  with  his 
own  control.  Surely  there  can  be  no  disputing 
that  democracy  is  the  most  flattering  to  the  in- 
dividual intelligence  of  any  of  the  systems  de- 
vised for  the  regulation  of  man  in  society. 

Then  again,  democracy  is  plainly  in  harmony 
with  a  pronounced  material  well-being  for  a  great 
many.  This  is  apparent  if  one  contrasts  the  dis- 
tribution of  riches  created  or  acquired  in  the 
development  of  the  north  and  south  halves  of  the 
American  continent.  In  the  case  of  South  Amer- 
ica, under  monarchy,  great  riches  were  accumu- 
lated, but  their  distribution  was  highly  restricted, 
while  in  the  peopling  of  North  America,  a  repub- 
lic, so  very  many  have  been  admitted  to  share  in 
its  wealth  that  a  common  notion  seems  to  pre- 
vail in  Europe  that  every  American  is  a  nabob. 

Abstractly  considered,  the  prevalence  of  the 
will  of  the  majority  seems  to  be  the  most  philo- 
sophic principle  which  can  obtain  in  civil  govern- 
ment. With  so  much  that  is  attractive  about  it 
one  must  always  approach  the  side  of  defect  with 
a  sympathetic  interest. 


4      •••••*     THE'  'WILL'  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

And  perhaps  the  chief  failing  of  popular  gov- 
ernment, as  we  find  it  at  present,  will  be  a  want 
of  vitality.  This  will  proceed  not  so  much  from 
the  common  faults  which  have  been  imputed  to 
it,  such  as  a  tendency  to  dishonesty  in  public  of- 
ficials, a  want  of  coherency  in  times  of  stress,  or 
a  childish  fondness  for  change  and  novelty,  but 
rather,  chiefly,  from  an  incapacity  for  distinction. 

It  sounds  fanciful  that  a  fault  so  apparently 
wiredrawn,  so  far  removed  from  the  actualities  of 
sufficient  food  to  eat,  and  clothes  to  wear,  and 
houses  to  live  in,  and  security  at  home  and  peace 
abroad — in  a  word,  an  objection  so  apparently 
effeminate— -could  be  the  greatest  menace  which 
threatens  the  richest  and  in  many  respects  the 
most  envied  civilization  in  the  world.  Yet,  such 
is  our  conviction  and  in  what  follows  an  endeavor 
has  been  made  both  to  account  for  the  presence 
in  modern  democracy  of  this  peril  and  to  lay  be- 
fore the  reader  proposed  avenues  of  escape  from 
a  universal  dominion  of  the  commonplace  and 
inferior. 

People  who  concede  the  reality  of  the  evil 
might  say,  "You  have  an  easy  solution.  Substi- 
tute a  monarchy.**  But  there  are  doubtless  many 
millions  of  us,  who,  granting  the  efficacy  of  such 
a  remedy  (which  we  are  by  no  means  prepared 
to  do),  will  not  listen  to  the  advice.  And  if  we 
should  ever  be  brought  to  so  fell  a  condition  it 
would  be  only  by  the  working  of  some  deep,  in- 
exorable law  of  human  nature,  but  not  with  our 
individual  consents.  For  we  are  tainted  with  a 
passion  for  the  democratic  ideal,  defective  and 
partial  as  it  may  at  present  be.  We  have  no  de- 
sire to  go  back  into  the  house  of  bondage.  We 
are  at  bottom  idealists — a  republican  is,  in  the 
very  nature  of  things,  the  greatest  idealist  alive. 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  5 

We  cherish  the  notion  in  the  abstract,  we  love  it 
in  the  particular — of  a  man  governing  himself, 
being  his  own  king  and  magistrate  through  the 
intellectualism  of  a  ballot.  To  our  minds,  never 
did  the  philosophers  of  Greece,  in  that  flowering 
time  of  the  human  spirit,  nor  never  will  the  philo- 
sopher in  any  conceivable  future  be  able  to  evolve 
any  political  notion  which  shall  have  attached  to 
it  so  much  dignity  and  intelligence  as  the  demo- 
cratic ideal.  We  would  not  consent  to  do  away 
with  democracy — we  desire  to  further  perfect 
democracy.  We  are  persuaded  that  there  are 
certain  imperative  demands  of  human  nature 
which  the  democracy  we  possess  does  not  appear 
capable  of  satisfying.  But  this  is  not  to  say  that 
a  reconstructed  and  perfected  democracy  would 
not  satisfy  them  .  We  believe  it  would.  And 
some  of  us,  at  least,  are  desirous  of  experimenting 
in  order  to  see  if  such  a  result  cannot  be  achieved. 

While  the  philosophic  principle  of  democracy, 
as  we  have  said,  appears  to  us  forever  beautiful, 
forever  attractive,  we  are  at  the  same  time  per- 
suaded that  the  practical  tendency  of  the  rule  of 
the  many  in  modern  societies  has  been  toward  the 
illiberal  and  commonplace.  A  calamity  thus 
identified,  we  think,  arises  from  such  democracy 
having  too  much  followed  its  line  of  least  resist- 
ance. To  this  line  of  least  resistance,  the  most 
definite  characteristic  of  which  is  inactivity  of  the 
intellect,  we  would  oppose  as  the  sufficient  rem- 
edy, mental  culture.  Not  mental  culture  as 
furtively  nibbled  at  by  bewildered  solitaries,  but 
mental  culture  as  the  serious  concern  of  the  state. 

We  do  not  claim  everything  for  culture.  We 
do  not  affirm  that  it  will  heal  the  body  or  save  the 
soul,  but  we  do  believe  that  culture  is  the  chief 
source  and  fountain  in  human  life  of  the  inter* 


6  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

esting.  The  unrest,  dissatisfaction,  ennui,  which 
one  now  sees  so  largely  on  every  hand,  and  which 
is  apt  to  be  attributed  to  so  many  random  agen- 
cies, we  believe  to  be  but  an  indication  that  in  our 
present  scheme  of  political  and  social  well-being 
something  has  been  left  undone.  And  that  that 
something  is  the  provision  by  the  state  of  the 
means  for  satisfying  fundamental  cravings  in  the 
human  soul  for  beauty,  order,  distinction — in  a 
word,  the  interesting. 

To  those  who  do  not  sympathize  with  our  en- 
thusiasm for  what  is  rare,  fine,  elevated  or  dis- 
tinguished, but  who  yet  would  like  to  preserve 
democracy,  we  would  say  that  in  following  some 
such  notion  as  is  adumbrated  in  these  pages,  they 
may  at  last  be  but  obeying  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation.  One  might  remind  those  who  wish 
to  see  this  present  democracy  in  North  America 
persist,  that  in  time,  if  they  do  not  take  suitable 
action,  the  mere  accumulation  of  wealth  will 
mechanically  settle  the  matter.  Not  wealth  while 
in  the  hands  of  the  original  possessors  of  it.  Be- 
cause they  have  not  had  the  leisure  which  the  suc- 
cession to  that  wealth  will  provide,  they  are 
scarcely  to  be  reckoned  with  at  all.  But  their 
grandchildren  and  their  grandchildrens*  children 
will  be  quite  another  race.  Inherited  wealth 
gives  time  for  reflection  and  meditation,  which,  in 
turn,  almost  lead  mathematically  to  certain  so- 
cial results.  For  people  thus  circumstanced  it  be- 
comes annoying  and  baffling  to  pass  their  lives 
with  a  second  best  when  they  might  have  the  best. 
As  time  mellows  their  circle  they  will  be  apt  to 
cast  their  eyes  about,  and  if  anywhere  in  the 
world  they  observe  the  noble  and  brilliant  things 
of  life  in  higher  honor  and  esteem,  they  will  sigh 
for  that  civilization.  And  here  the  danger  for 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  7 

democracy  is,  that  so  far,  incontestably,  these 
superior  things  which  maintain  a  thrall  over  all 
fine  souls,  and  even  over  all  fashionable  souls, 
have  been  fostered  and  revered  more  in  modern 
monarchies  than  in  modern  republics,  and  these 
seekers  after  the  reign  of  politeness  and  taste  may 
perhaps  be  too  impatient  to  inquire  carefully,  and 
to  distinguish  between  a  necessary  consequence 
and  accidental  circumstances,  but  fly  to  the  con- 
clusion that  monarchy  is  in  its  nature  more  suit- 
able to  the  flourishing  of  culture  than  democracy, 
— is  the  true  soil  of  culture.  Or  they  may  not  care 
about  the  merits  of  what  they  consider  a  mere 
detail,  and  have  eyes  only  for  their  goal. 

And  the  people  who  arrive  at  this  temper  of 
mind,  whenever  the  time  does  come,  are  not  to  be 
ignored,  because  they  will  be  in  possession  of  the 
great  accumulations  of  the  country's  wealth,  and 
the  influence  and  power  which  ever  accompany 
them.  While  numerically  they  may  amount  to 
but  a  fraction  of  the  population,  yet  in  all  great 
national  upheavals  such  always  have  been  and  al- 
ways will  be  the  ones  who  gain  their  end  event- 
ually. Even  when  they  are  in  the  wrong  they 
prevail — when  they  have  attractiveness  and  a  cry 
of  nature  on  their  side,  how  certainly  will  they 
prevail ! 

Thus,  if  from  no  other  than  a  utilitarian  stand- 
point (and  utilitarian  standpoints  are  said  to  be 
especially  beloved  of — not  democrats — but  of 
democracy)  it  seems  that  it  would  be  a  wise  pre- 
caution with  popular  governments  to  forward 
learning  and  culture  and  intellectual  distinction  as 
much,  and  to  endeavor  as  much  for  their  establish- 
ment and  renown,  as  any  monarchy  ever  did. 

The  doctrine  of  equality  enters  quite  prom- 
inently into  the  economy  of  democracy.  It  is, 


8  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

doubtless,  a  subject  demanding  a  great  deal  of 
discretion.  "All  created  equal" — yes,  political- 
ly equal,  if  you  will,  but  here  the  equality  quite 
ends.  And  the  tendency  of  the  democratic  ideal 
is  to  endeavor  to  extend  this  equality  to  other  de- 
partments, indeed,  all  the  activities  of  life.  But 
what  is  the  law  and  intent  of  nature  in  this  mat- 
ter? Nature  seems  to  have  had  no  eye  at  all  to 
the  theory,  or  rather,  a  fixed  determination  to  the 
contrary.  Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  man- 
kind possesses  anything  rather  than  an  equality 
of  talents.  Does  not  one  observe  daily,  even  in 
the  humbler  affairs  of  life,  in  handicrafts  and  the 
useful  arts,  how  pre-eminently  one  man's  bent  and 
skill  exceeds  his  fellow's?  And  how  often  and  to 
what  a  pronounced  degree,  is  this  superiority,  far 
from  being  the  result  of  familiarity  or  practice, 
purely  an  arbitrary  gift.  With  mental  endow- 
ments, as  with  bodily  dexterity,  the  same  rule 
holds  good.  In  such  matters  nature,  far  from 
contemplating  an  equality  seems  to  delight  in  in- 
equality. Thus  it  is  easy,  in  the  atmosphere  of  a 
free  commonwealth  to  push  the  doctrine  of 
equality  into  provinces  which  always  have  been 
and  always  will  be  strangers  to  its  operation. 

In  practice  the  result  of  such  a  philosophy  is 
to  propose  as  an  axiom  that  one  man's  opinion  is 
as  good  as  another  man's  opinion,  any  man's  veto 
as  important  as  any  other  man's  veto.  Of  course 
this  is  not  so.  And,  could  all  have  enjoyed  the 
same  advantages  of  education  and  position,  it 
still  would  not  be  so.  Nature  has  interfered  in 
the  politician's  plan  for  uniformity  with  a  certain 
number  of  superiorities.  Without  culture  these 
favored  individuals  would  enjoy  a  pronounced 
advantage  over  their  fellow  mortals;  with  the  re- 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  9 

finement  of  the  intellect  and  feelings  added,  the 
distance  separating  them  is  still  further  increased. 

The  final  problem  then  for  democracy  seems 
to  be  to  invent  some  machinery  for  enabling  it- 
self to  possess  the  fruits  of  the  great  talents  among 
its  citizens,  instead  of  satisfying  itself  with  the 
average  or  mean,  and  still  remain  democracy. 
And  to  this  end  it  appears  that  one  solution  might 
lie  in  a  division  of  labor  in  carrying  out  its  mani- 
fold functions. 

We  are  all  more  effective  in  pursuits  in  which 
we  have  had  some  experience  than  in  others.  In 
democracies — in  America,  to  take  America  for  a 
convenient  illustration — nearly  every  one  is  "the 
architect  of  his  own  fortune."  Now  the  economic 
and  financial  requirements  of  a  commonwealth 
fall  so  within  the  province  of  almost  every  citi- 
zen's daily  experience  in  a  great  modern  in- 
dustrial community,  that  it  appears  the  majority 
may  in  this  matter  be  entrusted  with  power  to  the 
greatest  attainable  benefit  of  all  concerned.  The 
number  of  persons  who  have  sound  notions  of 
finance,  and  are  respectable  judges  of  an  econo- 
mic policy  is,  in  America,  surprisingly  large.  In 
practical  politics,  likewise,  in  what  we  may  call 
the  ordering  of  the  common  civic  routine,  the 
majority  in  America  is  singularly  calm,  philo- 
sophic, capable.  Thus  far  the  average  or  mean 
may  well  retain  power  and  direction  exclusively 
in  its  own  hands. 

But  it  is  in  what  one  might  entitle  the  extra- 
ordinary or  ornamental  concerns  of  existence  that 
a  doubt  of  the  adequacy  of  the  average  intelli- 
gence and  abilities  may  be  reasonably  entertained. 
In  the  domain  of  education,  of  taste,  of  the  fine 
arts,  nothing  like  the  value  attaches  to  the  con- 
victions of  the  average  man  as  is  the  case  with 


10  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

the  economic  departments  of  the  state.  Here 
superiorities  are  everything.  This  is  why  mon- 
archies so  often  have  appeared  intellectually  more 
distinguished  than  modern  democracies.  The 
choice  of  the  best  talents  to  instruct  the  people 
was  in  the  hands  of  one  man  influenced  by  the 
opinion  of  a  few  enlightened  advisers.  A  most 
radical  educational  programme  or  patronage 
could  be  launched  practically  without  consulting 
any  one  of  the  millions  to  be  affected  by  it  or  who 
were  to  support  it. 

But  popular  governments  must  have  their 
"majorities"  for  every  move.  And  among  the 
masses  there  is  a  distinct  repugnance  to  being  led 
out  of  themselves,  and  it  is  difficult  to  get  major- 
ities for  this  kind  of  a  proceeding.  Yet  the  major- 
ity in  a  popular  government  is  incontestably 
master.  There  is  no  ignoring  majorities.  The 
majority's  power  is  supreme  everywhere.  Before 
the  least  advance  can  be  made  one  must  treat  with 
the  majority.  The  matter,  then,  seems  to  resolve 
itself  into  a  voluntary  concession  on  the  part  of 
the  majority  to  a  selected  minority  best  fitted 
to  preponderate  in  the  nation's  intellectual  con- 
cerns. Under  this  arrangement  the  majority 
would  continue  to  act  where  it  is  strong  and  its 
hand  sure,  that  is,  in  shaping  and  controlling  the 
economic  destiny  of  the  commonwealth.  In  a 
more  restricted  province,  that  of  education,  it 
would  concede  powers  plenipotentiary,  or  almost 
so,  to  a  lesser  body  best  able  to  act  with  success 
within  that  sphere. 

If  we  concede  that  those  best  fitted  to  direct 
the  financial  affairs  of  the  commonwealth  are  the 
many,  let  us  as  freely  own  that  those  most  useful 
to  it  as  intellectual  guides  are  the  few.  These 
wisest  and  most  accomplished,  then,  who  would 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  11 

never  be  able  to  carry  their  projects  by  "major- 
ities," must,  in  their  restricted  sphere  of  action, 
be  given  a  great  deal  more  power  than  mere 
numerical  importance  would  entitle  them  to.  In 
accordance  with  such  a  theory  two  departments 
in  the  national  government  might  be  exempted, 
as  far  as  possible,  from  the  operation  of  the  law 
of  survival  by  majority.  These  would  be  a  De- 
partment of  Education  and  a  Department  of  Fine 
Arts.  Such  bureaus  instead  of  resembling  in  their 
organization  and  operation  those  already  existing 
would  be  bodies  constituted  after  the  model  of 
our  Supreme  Court.  Each  might  consist  of  a 
dozen  members,  with  life  appointments,  just  as  is 
the  case  with  the  Supreme  justices.  But  vacancies, 
instead  of  being  filled  by  presidential  nomination, 
would  be  filled  by  an  elective  selection  on  the  part 
of  the  bodies  themselves.  Thus  divorced  from 
politics,  and  with  a  tenure  of  office  secure  from 
the  anxieties  of  varying  popular  favor  these  de- 
partments might  pursue  their  aims  with  that  seri- 
ousness and  fixity  of  purpose  so  necessary  to  the 
accomplishment  of  any  large  permanent  results. 

The  most  eminent  scholars  which  the  country 
might  produce,  its  men  of  creative  talents  and 
genius,  would  be  attracted  by  such  a  provision 
and  esteem  it  a  peculiar  honor  to  be  thus  invited 
to  assist  in  the  intellectual  advancement  of  their 
countrymen.  And  this  would  be  an  immense  gain 
to  have  the  worthiest  for  the  task  established  in 
power  and  influence,  and,  within  their  own  sphere, 
supreme. 


12  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

CHAPTER  II 
THE  PENALTY  OF  A  LOW  OR  NO  STANDARD 

If  by  neglecting  to  avail  itself  of  those  measures 
which  would  insure  to  it  dignity  and  distinction,  a 
democracy  proceeds  along  its  line  of  least  re- 
sistance, and  rests  in  intellectual  and  spiritual 
satisfactions  which  are  not  only  in  the  mass  medio- 
cre, but  in  many  things  base  and  ignoble — if  a 
democracy  thus  permits  the  things  of  the  mind 
to  shift  for  themselves,  is  there  apt  to  be  any 
particular  penalty?  Probably  there  is. 

To  begin  with,  people  are  always  comparing 
monarchy  and  republicanism.  And  if  monarchial 
institutions  should  produce  in  each  thousand  of 
the  population  a  higher  percentage  of  intellectual- 
ly superior  people  it  will  exert  a  dissolvent  force 
in  time  upon  its  great  rival.  In  the  long  run,  the 
most  distinguished  societies  or  institutions  will  be 
the  most  fashionable.  Such  has  always  been  the 
case,  and  doubtless,  such  always  will  be. 

The  richer  people  grow  and  the  more  of  the 
affluent  there  are  to  be  found,  the  less  will  an  ex- 
clusively commercial  supremacy  satisfy  them. 
Material  luxury  cannot  for  long  be  maintained 
without  creating  a  demand  for  intellectual  luxury. 
The  great-grandson  of  a  man  with  no  pretensions 
to  taste  who  has  acquired  millions,  does  not  have 
the  same  outlook  on  life  as  his  perhaps  more 
active  ancestor.  Too  much  leisure  has  intervened 
in  three  generations,  too  much  opportunity  for 
observation  and  reflection.  And  with  reflection 
comes  the  enquiry,  What  is  most  worth  while  in 
life?  And  then  follows  investigation  as  to  what 
enlightened  opinion  through  the  ages  has  to  say 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  13 

on  this  point.  Finally  the  enquirer  is  apt  to  sur- 
render to  the  weight  of  authorities. 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind  in  speculating  upon 
the  future  of  democracy  as  now  established  that 
an  actually  new  polity  has  entered  upon  the  thea- 
tre of  the  political  regulation  of  mankind.  Little 
to  the  purpose,  it  seems,  can  be  learned  from  an 
examination  of  the  tendencies  and  fortune  of 
popular  government  in  ancient  or  medieval  times. 
And  this  because  all  of  the  previous  trials  of  so- 
called  free  government  which  have  any  im- 
portance in  history,  such  as  democracy  at  Athens, 
the  Roman  republic,  or  the  medieval  Italian  cities, 
were,  either  technically  or  in  effect,  not  what  the 
modern  world  understands  by  democracies  or 
republics,  but  oligarchies.  Always  there  were  the 
two  classes  in  the  state,  nobles  and  commons, 
patrician  and  pleb.  The  feature  of  current 
democracy  which  was  incomprehensible  to  the 
ancient  mind  is  universal  equality.  One  may  indeed 
say  that  before  the  establishment  of  the  common- 
wealth of  the  United  States  of  America,  such  an 
experiment  on  any  imposing  or  adequate  scale 
had  never  been  attempted.  This  is  perhaps  the 
chief  reason  why  the  course  which  the  United 
States  is  to  run  will  have  so  deep  a  significance, 
as  time  passes,  for  the  student  of  political  and 
social  development. 

In  all  the  older  democracies  which  we  know  of 
there  was  invariably  this  "upper"  or  ruling  class. 
It  was  always  an  intrenched  class  with  more  or 
less  of  a  prescriptive  authority.  The  concerns  of 
culture  were  in  its  hands  so  that  in  those  ages  it 
was  not  nearly  so  important  what  the  view  of  the 
masses  in  matters  intellectual  happened  to  be  as 
it  is  now.  Today  there  are  no  nobles  to  act  as  the 
fosterers,  custodians  and  introducers  of  refine- 


14  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

ment.  And  whatever  may  be  said  of  their  use- 
fulness to  society  in  other  directions,  has  not  their 
patronage  of  the  fine  arts,  and  of  the  things  of  the 
mind  been,  in  truth,  a  real  claim  which  may  be 
urged  for  them  to  the  gratitude  of  mankind?  To 
this  extent  they  were  a  happy  machinery  in  the 
scheme  of  things.  They  set  the  tone  and  that  tone 
was  always  higher  than  the  common  taste  of  the 
body  of  the  people.  But  we  have  done  away 
with  all  that.  There  are  no  more  nobles  to  set  the 
tone.  But  the  interests  of  culture  may  not  wisely 
be  left  to  take  care  of  themselves.  They  are  not 
like  the  instinct  for  wealth,  for  instance,  which 
needs  no  encouragement  from  any  quarter  but 
seems  to  exist  in  its  perfection  without  conscious 
cultivation. 

What  makes  a  people  illustrious  in  the  long  run 
is  intellectual  distinction,  and  any  political  philo- 
sophy which  leaves  this  matter  out  of  account 
will  be  admitting  into  its  policy  a  subtly  disin- 
tegrating element.  Despite  people's  apparent  dis- 
regard of  what  is  rare  and  fine,  there  is  in  human 
nature  the  seed  of  a  fixed  intolerance  of  the  com- 
monplace. And  with  the  increase  of  ease  and 
material  prosperity  this  ennui  but  becomes  more 
real  and  definite. 

Thus  it  is  conceivable  that  in  time,  should  a 
political  system  ignore  that  part  of  its  office  which 
is  concerned  with  making  life  interesting,  that  is, 
fostering  distinction  in  thinking  and  acting  which 
renders  a  civilization  illustrious, — it  is  conceiv- 
able, that  notwithstanding  manifold  unques- 
tioned material  benefits,  its  adherents  would  come 
to  regard  it  with  indifference^  and  live  in  a  state 
half  ready  to  welcome  some  rival  system  which 
was  wiser  in  regard  to  instincts  so  deeply  im- 
planted in  the  human  soul. 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  15 

Therefore,  as  an  element  of  permanence  and 
strength,  democracy  should  contemplate  not  only 
bestowing  upon  its  beneficiaries  the  maximum  of 
personal  liberty,  the  maximum  of  material  well- 
being,  but  the  adoption  of  measures  designed  to 
lend  an  intellectual  eclat  to  its  tenure  of  office. 
If  it  does  not,  if  democracy,  in  time,  shall  come 
to  be  regarded  as  an  exclusively  mercantile  con- 
ception of  the  power  and  office  of  government 
it  will  probably  fail  to  permanently  satisfy  the 
more  enlightened  bodies  of  mankind.  And  yet, 
democracy,  in  its  idea,  is  undoubtedly  the  most 
purely  intellectual  theory  of  social  organization 
which  humanity  has  so  far  formulated.  It  is  of 
the  essence  of  the  mind,  and  the  sovereignty  of 
the  mind,  to  govern  oneself.  And  in  a  democracy 
one  is  nearer  to  being  his  own  lawgiver  than  in 
any  other  variety  of  civil  regulation. 

Democracy,  then,  not  only  for  that  noble  sort 
of  pleasure  which  it  has  within  its  power  to  con- 
fer upon  its  citizens,  but  perhaps  for  its  very  pre- 
servation as  an  active  influence  in  the  world,  must 
conclude  an  alliance  with  culture.  The  forces  of 
culture,  within  their  sphere,  must,  far  from  being 
ignored  or  condemned,  be  allowed  a  real  power 
and  a  real  play.  Freedom  and  liberty  are  price- 
less things,  yet,  strange  to  say,  history  seems  to 
tell  us  that  man  will  live  for  ages  with  almost  no 
freedom  nor  liberty,  but  that  he  will  not  willing- 
ly exist  for  any  great  length  of  time  in  a  world  of 
monotony.  And  you  may  give  a  civil  society  the 
widest  measure  of  individual  freedom  and  liberty 
and  yet  condemn  it  to  monotony.  Assuredly 
when  a  state  has  merely  provided  a  large  measure 
of  individual  freedom  and  liberty  it  has  not  pro- 
vided enough.  To  genuinely  succeed,  after  the 
hardships  of  mere  animal  existence  have  been 


16  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

softened,  after  personal  safety  and  personal  in- 
dependence are  guaranteed,  there  remains  the 
task  of  making  life  interesting. 

People  will  say,  'This  is  an  individual  affair. 
Let  each  citizen,  within  the  laws,  establish  for 
himself  any  sort  of  a  world  he  chooses.  Let  him 
live,  if  he  likes,  in  his  closet  with  Sophocles  and 
Plato;  in  his  fancy  revivify  and  repeople  Old 
Greece,  and  surround  himself  with  its  splendors." 
But  this  is  idle.  Whatever  a  man  loves  or  admires, 
to  afford  him  its  fullest  measure  of  satisfaction, 
must,  as  far  as  possible,  be  alive.  It  must  vibrate 
in  the  atmosphere  he  breathes,  it  must  palpitate 
in  other  minds.  Man  is  by  nature  too  social  to 
find  his  highest  happiness  an  exclusive  happiness. 
Too  much  of  the  pleasure  in  the  noblest  satis- 
factions is  in  communicating  or  receiving,  at  any 
rate,  in  common  possession.  Furthermore,  the 
very  mechanics  of  the  reign  of  culture  require  a 
constant  and  splendid  monetary  assistance  which 
is  only  conveniently  arrived  at  in  the  co-operation 
of  all  the  citizens  of  a  commonwealth.  Adequate 
exterior  manifestations  of  distinction  and  a  sense 
for  beauty  and  appropriateness,  such  as  public 
buildings  and  monuments,  are  as  essential  as  they 
are  beyond  the  powers  or  prerogative  of  the  in- 
dividual. 

Of  this  much  we  can  be  sure:  When  the  men 
of  reflection  and  taste  are  solitaries,  having  no 
influence  upon  their  generation,  no  hand  in  the 
general  scheme  of  things,  shunning  what  they  see 
and  hear,  and  flying  to  a  more  bearable  but  far 
from  satisfactory  seclusion,  general  society  is  not 
in  a  happy  posture.  And  men  cannot  well  come 
at  this  intellectual  community  of  interests,  so  in- 
dispensable in  a  generally  polished  and  attractive 
civilization,  without  the  aid  and  sympathy  of  the 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  17 

state.  Nothing  is  supposed  to  be  more  inde- 
pendent than  genius,  and  yet  even  genius  does 
not  seem  to  arise  when  the  attitude  of  the  state  is 
distant  or  hostile  towards  its  designs. 

The  domestic  problem,  then,  for  an  intelligent 
civil  polity,  is  to  make  life  under  its  sway,  full, 
complete,  interesting.  And  making  life  brilliant 
and  interesting,  in  the  sense  here  sought  to  be 
conveyed,  is  the  work  of  culture.  Whatever  is 
beautiful,  whatever  is  rare  and  fine — in  the  liberal 
arts,  in  social  life  and  manners,  in  the  individual 
character,  there  for  mankind  is  the  source  of  the 
interesting.  And  culture  is  an  effort  to  make  beauty 
and  fineness  more  and  more  prevail,  and  to  do 
away  with  the  ennui  inseparable  from  the  reign 
of  the  commonplace  and  ignoble,  from  rawness 
and  deformity.  Hence,  nothing  is  more  en- 
lightened in  a  government  than  an  eye  to  the 
blessings  and  benefits  which  may  be  conferred  by 
the  best  culture. 

Thus  far  in  the  world's  history  much  has  been 
done  toward  keeping  alive  and  in  estimation  the 
memory  of  the  men  of  action,  such  as  military 
conquerors  and  subjugators.  But  in  the  time  to 
come,  when  the  misnamed  glories  of  rapine  and 
violence  will  more  and  more  recede  from  an  evil 
prominence  in  the  eyes  of  mankind,  when  the  ad- 
justment of  all  international  difficulties  will  be  ar- 
rived at  through  arbitration,  when  slaughter  will 
not  be  tolerated  in  such  junctures  because  it  is 
unintelligent,  then  will  the  men  of  thought,  the 
heroes  of  a  more  beneficent  genius,  be  more  and 
more  celebrated  in  the  councils  of  an  enlightened 
and  grateful  society.  To  promote  this  happy  con- 
summation is  the  part  of  culture.  For  the  worthiest 
portion  of  the  race  an  instrument  of  such  promise 
will  always  have  an  irresistible  attraction.  A 


18  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

wise  policy  will  seize  on  the  importance  of  so 
fundamental  an  inspiration  of  the  human  mind 
and  heart.  A  short-sighted  policy,  a  policy  fore- 
doomed, we  may  believe,  to  failure,  will  ignore 
or  undervalue  it. 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  19 

CHAPTER  HI 

SUPERIORITIES  AND  INFERIORITIES 

With  all  the  various  kinds  of  aristocracies 
which  have  existed  in  the  world  very  little  has 
ever  been  done  towards  establishing  in  power  and 
place  that  one  which  is  least  artificial,  which  is 
least  repugnant  to  the  leveling  tendencies  of  man- 
kind— the  aristocracy  of  intellect.  The  most 
doctrinaire  emancipator  will  tell  you  that  if  any 
class  should  be  set  above  any  other  class  in  this 
cosmic  cauldron,  the  world,  it  should  be  the  body 
of  those  who  possess  the  greatest  degree  of  intell- 
igence and  learning.  This  willingness  on  all  sides 
to  grant,  in  the  abstract,  precedence  to  the  most 
handsomely  furnished  minds,  comes,  no  doubt, 
in  part  from  the  conviction  that  it  is  the  reward 
of  deserving  merit,  that  it  is  a  distinction  honestly 
earned,  if  not  by  the  sweat,  at  least  by  the  con- 
traction of  the  brow.  It  is  readily  conceded  that 
the  superiority  of  such  persons  is  a  real  superiority, 
an  actual  and  palpable  pre-eminence,  whereas  the 
pretensions  of  blood,  for  instance,  many  deem  to 
be  not  only  often  illusory  but  in  their  nature 
arbitrary  and  unjust. 

Doubtless,  one  disadvantage  the  aristocracy 
of  intellect  has  had  to  contend  with  in  its  endeavor 
to  attain  a  respectable  position  among  the  other 
aristocracies  is  that  so  frequently  it  does  not 
descend.  Another  defect  it  labors  under,  for  all 
strict  segregationists,  is  that  it  cannot  be  confined 
within  accustomed  hallowed  precincts.  A  credit- 
able aristocracy  is  supposed  to  dwell  within  the 
limits  of  Mayfair  or  Belgravia,  but  the  aristocracy 
of  intellect  is  just  as  apt  to  be  found  in  any  alarm- 
ing quarter  of  town,  South  Kensington  or  even 


20  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

Barnes.  Moreover,  it  cannot  be  even  moderately 
freed  from  the  disadvantage  of  "new  men."  Its 
limits,  potentially,  are  co-existent  with  the  sum 
total  of  society.  In  a  word,  it  is  too  democratic 
in  its  nature  to  be  an  aristocracy  at  all.  Yet,  if 
any  precedence  is  to  be  acknowledged  within  the 
social  fabric,  which  one  has  a  more  enlightened 
or  philosophical  title  to  the  indulgence  of  man- 
kind? 

In  a  mentally  and  spiritually  prosperous  so- 
ciety, the  number  of  additions  to  this  illustrious 
but  disinherited  order  is  continually  increasing. 
A  great  many  may  qualify  themselves  for  admis- 
sion and  be  received  into  the  happy  family,  and 
rest  in  the  hope  of  a  serene  and  elevated  equal- 
ity. But  once  within  they  will  begin  to  but  the 
more  clearly  perceive  what  they  may  be  disposed 
to  look  upon  as  the  unkindness  of  nature.  Nature 
cares  nothing  for  equality.  With  nature's  intent, 
if  every  man  turned  out,  to  employ  the  familiar 
expression,  to  be  "just  as  good  as  the  next  man" 
one  can  conceive  nature  reeling  with  astonish- 
ment. 

Of  course,  what  is  possible,  and  what  may  be 
accomplished,  is  for  all  of  us  to  reach  a  desirable 
state  of  aesthetic  respectability.  In  order  to  effect 
the  greatest  progression  in  this  laudable  design 
it  is  the  part  of  wisdom  to  avail  ourselves  cheer- 
fully and  thankfully  of  the  talents  of  those  su- 
periorities which  nature  has  sown  amongst  us. 

Taste,  or  a  talent  for  seeing  and  seizing  the 
truth  in  the  domain  of  grace  and  beauty,  is  as 
actually  an  instinctive  gift  of  nature  as  consum- 
mateness  in  literary  expression,  or  music,  or  the 
arts  of  design.  True,  taste  can  no  more  be 
brought  to  its  ultimate  perfection  without  study 
and  laborious  comparison  than  can  poetry,  music, 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  21 

or  painting,  but  at  the  same  time  it  is  not  wholly 
an  acquired  possession,  as  many  are  apt  to  esteem 
it. 

Now,  in  our  plan  of  amelioration  of  the  aesthe- 
tically hard  lot  of  the  many,  we  have  more  of  an 
eye  to  the  man  of  taste  than  we  do  to  the  admitted 
genius  in  the  arts  just  mentioned.  First,  because 
the  man  of  taste  is  of  a  more  frequent  growth, 
and  for  our  purpose  we  require  multitude.  Then 
again,  his  sphere  of  activities  is  broader.  A 
master  of  poetry  will  be  a  sovereign  authority  for 
us  in  poetry,  but  in  other  manifestations  of  the 
beautiful,  or  the  appropriate,  in  companion  arts,  in 
an  adequate  philosophy  of  life  and  manners,  his 
shortcomings  may  be  prodigious.  The  man  of 
taste,  on  the  contrary,  professes  no  one  art  as  the 
limits  of  his  contemplation.  His  interest  centres 
in  the  sum  total  of  all  the  arts,  of  all  those  mani- 
fold exertions  in  humanity  to  introduce  a  gracious, 
harmonious,  intelligent  spirit  into  the  deliberations 
and  actions  of  man  in  society.  The  man  of  taste, 
when  his  gift  is  eminent  in  degree,  is  the  critic. 
Our  great  critics  have  been  the  flowering  of  the 
man  of  taste. 

Now,  is  it  not  the  part  of  wisdom,  for  those  left 
to  their  own  wills,  as  people  are  in  a  democracy, 
to  seek  for  their  guides  in  intellectual  matters 
among  the  men  of  taste?  We  do  not  learn  in 
these  high  concerns  from  our  inferiors  nor  our 
equals,  we  learn  from  our  superiors.  Through 
study  and  application  and  native  talents  our  one- 
time superiors  may,  indeed,  become  our  equals 
or  our  inferiors,  but  when  they  were  most  valu- 
able to  us,  when  they  were  essential  to  us,  they 
were  our  superiors.  In  popular  governments,  due 
no  doubt  to  a  deeply  rooted  belief  in  the  bene- 
ficence of  equality  in  the  strict  political  sphere, 


22  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

it  seems  there  is  a  tendency  to  regard  it  with  a 
large  tolerance  in  other  spheres.  To  have  the 
teacher  no  more  than  the  equal  of  the  pupil  seems 
not  to  be  a  painful  anomaly.  In  truth,  what  can 
be  more  fruitless,  more  futile,  than  for  seekers 
after  knowledge  to  be  applying  themselves  to 
their  equals?  That  is,  sitting  at  the  fount  of  the 
average  wisdom  of  their  society?  It  is  an  attitude 
worse  than  that  of  pure  inertia  or  intellectual 
stagnation  because  this  average  wisdom,  receiving 
no  aid  from  above,  tends  to  become  lower,  in- 
stead of  ascending  or  remaining  stationary. 

What  must  be  called  into  play  if  there  is  to  be 
any  common  progression,  in  fact  to  avoid  retro- 
gression, is  the  best  talent  available  for  the 
purposes  of  educating  and  refining  general  so- 
ciety. Now,  the  more  a  man  knows  he  is  right, 
the  less  willing  he  is  to  be  interfered  with.  And 
the  people  of  culture,  the  most  enlightened  indi- 
viduals in  a  commonwealth,  have  this  well-found- 
ed conviction  in  an  eminent  degree.  There  is  no 
such  thing  about  them  as  the  hesitancy  of  mis- 
trust. Of  course,  in  all  these  observations  it  must 
be  understood  that  we  are  confining  the  matter, 
for  all  practical  purposes,  to  the  concerns  of  the 
mind,  taste,  the  polite  arts,  social  distinction.  At 
the  outset  we  have  thrust  to  one  side  utilitarian 
activities,  what  is  called  "getting  on  in  the  world." 
This  latter  is  a  task  which  may  safely  be  left  to 
primal  instincts  of  every  son  of  Adam.  By  the 
vast  preponderance  of  the  race  it  is  never  lost 
sight  of,  it  will  never  be  neglected.  Only,  it  is 
really  a  pity  that  every  one  is  so  concerned  about 
it,  beyond  supplying  the  reasonable  comforts  and 
conveniences  of  life,  seeing  how  many  constantly 
do  and  are  always  destined  to  miss  wealth. 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  23 

Culture  is  more  like  virtue,  with  an  earnest  effort 
no  such  failure  is  possible. 

We  were  saying  that  the  most  enlightened  al- 
ways know  they  are  the  most  enlightened  and  are 
apt  to  be  a  little  impatient  at  much  hampering.  If 
their  liberty  of  action  is  too  greatly  restricted,  if 
they  are  subjected  to  too  much  and  to  too  fre- 
quent inquisitorial  supervision  by  those  knowing 
less  of  their  subject,  they  do  not,  in  general,  long 
submit  to  this  annoyance  but  retire  from  the  field. 
But  to  have  them  retire  from  the  field,  or  not  to 
venture  into  the  field,  is  fraught  with  the  gravest 
consequences  for  their  countrymen.  To  have  all 
our  native  Platos  lurking  under  their  walls  in  a 
cloud  of  hostile  dust  of  our  creating  would  be  the 
real  tragedy  of  democracy.  It  must  be  confessed 
that  so  far  our  national  attitude  towards  those  best 
equipped  to  do  us  good  has  been  far  from  cordial. 
Some  of  these,  like  Colonel  Astor,  (I  do  not  pre- 
sent him  as  the  ideal  specimen,  but  he  might  have 
been  useful  to  us)  have  taken  up  their  abode 
abroad.  Others,  like  Major  Higginson  of  Boston, 
still  struggle  against  currents  bearing  us  on  to  the 
dead  sea  of  mediocrity. 

Human  nature  is  so  constituted  that  we  must 
follow  some  one,  and,  alas,  if  we  could  but  get  it 
well  settled  in  our  national  consciousness  that  it  is 
of  enormous  significance  whether  we  follow  the 
superiorities  or  the  inferiorities  who  offer  them- 
selves as  our  guides!  If  we  could  only  perceive 
clearly  that  the  inferiorities  will  always  be  quite 
willing  to  do  what  we  want  done,  and  that  the 
superiorities  will  stand  fast  for  doing  what  ought 
to  be  done.  If  we  could  be  convinced  that  the 
superiorities  come  into  the  world  with  a  work  to 
perform  from  which  all  may  profit  but  which  they 
alone  are  most  capable  of  accomplishing,  and  that 


24  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

by  preferring  complaisant  and  spurious  prophets 
we  are  defeating  the  very  object  of  our  hope, 
which  is  to  set  up  under  democracy  an  enduring 
and  illustrious  civilization. 

If  our  arrangements  for  the  diffusion  of  knowl- 
edge and  taste,  as  now  constituted,  do  not  do 
more  than  present  to  us  conclusions  of  the  mean  or 
average  minds  amongst  us,  then  there  is  every  rea- 
son for  remodeling  that  machinery  in  the  hope  of 
arriving  at  something  better.  I  call  the  average 
minds  inferiorities,  and  in  this  sense  there  is  no 
more  discredit  attached  to  the  characterization 
than  there  is  to  not  being  a  great  painter,  or  a 
genius  in  poetry.  I  call  the  superiorities,  men  of 
destiny,  men  only  very  partially,  if  at  all,  to  be 
esteemed  the  creators  of  their  special  talent. 
Choice  spirits,  in  whom  a  love  and  enthusiasm  for 
what  is  fine,  a  passion  for  searching  out  and  hold- 
ing in  honor  the  best  which  has  appeared  in  the 
world,  is  a  precious  and  divine  gift  with  which 
they  were  born  to  the  profit  and  delight  of  man- 
kind. 

There  is  no  discredit  in  not  having  been  thus 
singled  out  by  nature,  but  there  is  discredit  in  not 
establishing  such  men  in  place  and  power  over 
our  intellectual  concerns;  in  following,  rather, 
either  the  bent  of  our  own  unintelligent  and  way- 
ward inclinations  or  the  popular  persuasions  of 
some  confident  mountebank  who  promises  to 
make  ignorance  fashionable. 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  25 

CHAPTER  IV 
NATIONALISM  AND  INTERNATIONALISM 

About  the  close  of  the  middle  ages  a  marked 
enthusiasm  for  the  idea  of  national  pre-eminence, 
as  contrasted  with  a  lively  interest  in  the  welfare 
of  the  Christian  world  as  a  whole,  seems  to  have 
seized  men's  minds  everywhere. 

Previously  the  influence  and  policy  of  the 
Church  had  tended  to  keep  up  a  community  of 
feeling  among  the  various  peoples  of  Europe. 
Europe  was,  in  effect  at  least,  much  more  like  a 
confederation  of  states  than  it  has  ever  been  since. 
A  common  religion  did  much  to  foster  mutual  in- 
terest and  good  will  at  a  time  when,  if  one  may 
judge,  religion  occupied  a  far  greater  share  of 
men's  thoughts  than  it  does  now. 

But  at  the  Reformation  when  so  many  of  the 
states  of  Europe  relinquished  their  allegiance  to 
the  Church,  nationalism  received  a  final  impulse 
which  is  yet  far  from  spent.  Instead  of  esteeming 
themselves  units  in  a  widely  spread  civilizing 
movement,  nations  now  began  to  consider  them- 
selves distinctly  opposed  segregations.  Whether 
it  is  that  in  the  human  heart  there  is  an  innate 
yearning  for  national  identity  and  development, 
or  whether  the  princes  of  that  age  perceived  a  dis- 
tinct personal  advantage  in  the  spread  of  the  new 
politics,  remains  an  attractive  subject  of  specula- 
tion. At  any  rate,  a  love  of  country,  a  little  in- 
compatible with  the  love  of  other  countries,  was 
certainly  forwarded  to  the  best  of  their  abilities 
by  those  in  possession.  Very  little  fanning  pro- 
duced a  great  deal  of  flame  and  a  good  deal  of 
fanning  produced  a  conflagration.  From  thence, 


26  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

it  seems,  proceeds  the  intense  national  patriotism 
of  our  own  day  which  in  so  many  amounts  to  a 
religion.  Or  perhaps,  where  people  have  so 
largely  lost  faith  in  the  supernatural,  it  is  more 
accurate  to  say,  it  takes  the  place  of  a  religion. 
Almost  no  check  was  presented  to  this  passion 
which  had  so  powerfully  fascinated  men's  minds 
until  the  general  diffusion  in  the  last  century  of 
the  principles  of  socialism,  prominent  among 
which,  as  every  one  knows,  is  an  aspiration  for 
the  political  unification  of  mankind.  But  social- 
ism has  many  and  powerful  enemies  and  perhaps 
we  need  not  look  for  it  to  gain  possession  of  the 
world  for  a  long  time  to  come. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  practical  politics, 
nationalism  possesses  unquestionable  advantages. 
It  seems  agreeable  and  refreshing  to  human  na- 
ture, at  any  rate  human  nature  in  its  present  de- 
gree of  development.  For  purposes  of  admin- 
istration the  division  of  the  earth  into  plots  of 
convenient  size  has  heretofore  appeared  almost 
a  necessity.  Too  far  removed  from  the  seat  of 
government,  people  seem  to  forget  they  have 
any  government  at  all.  An  order  in  council,  by 
the  time  it  has  proceeded  half  way  round  the 
earth  is  apt  to  get  wrangled  out  of  all  resemblance 
to  what  it  was  where  discussion  is  not  so  in- 
dispensable an  institution.  Again,  populations, 
through  the  machinery  of  nationality,  often  have 
it  in  their  power  to  exert  a  wholesome  economic 
pressure  on  neighboring  populations  which 
threaten  their  commercial  supremacy.  And 
there  are  manifest  advantages  of  internal  admin- 
istration which  might  also  be  mentioned.  Doubt- 
less, then,  he  would  be  a  bold  advocate  who,  in 
the  spheres  of  practical  politics  or  of  mercantile 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  27 

expediency,  should  endeavor  to  make  out  a  case 
against  the  ardent  nationalism  of  the  present  day. 

But  there  is  a  sphere  in  which  nationalism,  as 
opposed  to  internationalism,  is  fatal.  In  dealing 
with  the  things  of  the  mind,  one  must  of  necessity 
contemplate  the  world  as  a  whole.  If  our  aspira- 
tion is  to  be  acquainted  with  the  best  that  has  been 
produced  anywhere,  and  culture  is  not  satisfied 
with  less  pretentions,  it  is  absurd  to  confine  our- 
selves to  the  best  that  has  been  produced  in  this 
country  or  that  country.  If,  from  motives  of 
patriotism,  we  wish  to  restrict  ourselves  to  a  tin 
dipper  made  in  America  or  made  in  England  or 
in  Germany,  it  is,  indeed,  no  great  matter.  Else- 
where, perhaps,  better  dippers  may  be  obtain- 
able than  this  particular  holy  dipper,  but  it  is  of 
no  eminent  consequence  whether  we  are  content 
with  a  merely  serviceable  dipper,  an  excellent 
dipper,  or  the  best  obtainable  dipper. 

But  if  we  are  enquiring  as  to  whether  certain 
acts  or  states  of  mind  should  be  regarded  as 
gracious,  harmonious,  polished,  intelligent,  then 
we  cannot  afford  to  rest  in  what  America,  or 
England  or  Germany  says  about  it,  for  the  truest 
or  most  valuable  opinion  on  this  particular  matter 
may  proceed  from  some  other  centre  of  thought, 
or  it  may  be  requisite  for  our  purpose  to  form  a 
judgment  from  the  collective  best  thought  every- 
where. What  we  require  in  such  instances,  and 
nothing  less  will  suffice,  is  not  the  best  which  has 
been  said  or  ascertained  of  a  thing  in  our  own 
country,  but  the  best  anywhere. 

Thus  in  all  liberal  studies,  in  the  fine  arts,  in 
the  province  of  the  beautiful,  the  graceful,  the  ap- 
propriate in  social  life  and  manners,  there  is  sim- 
ply no  escape  from  internationalism.  If  Italy  is 
renowned  for  its  pre-eminence  in  painting,  it  is 


28  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

surely  absurd  for  one  to  limit  his  artistic  horizon 
to  the  chefs-d'oeuvre  of  Abyssinia  merely  because 
he  happens  to  be  a  native  of  that  respectable  po- 
litical division.  For  us  in  America  there  was  for 
a  long  time  the  form  of  an  excuse  offered  for  not 
applying  to  the  older  and  riper  communities  of 
Europe  for  assistance  in  our  problems  of  an  in- 
tellectual or  aesthetic  character.  It  was  said  that 
Europe  is,  in  the  main,  monarchical  in  political 
complexion;  that  it  could  have  little  patience  and 
no  sympathy  with  the  aspirations  of  a  free  people, 
and  that  such  evil  communications  would  be  apt 
to  corrupt  good  democracy.  It  was,  of  course, 
not  profound  reasoning,  but  it  had  an  uncommon 
vogue  among  us.  Happily  now,  however,  this 
phantom  terror  is  rapidly  dissolving.  Politically, 
Europe  seems  at  length  to  be  coming  round  to 
our  side.  Could  any  one  desire  to  see  her  more 
coy  than  she  is  at  present  towards  her  new  lover, 
Democracy.  Every  lumber  room  in  Europe 
seems  on  the  point  of  being  crammed  with  a 
throne,  and  kings  of  affording  the  type  and  pat- 
tern of  persistent  travelers. 

For  the  unfettered  development  of  single-class 
democracy  the  geographical  isolation  of  America 
has  been,  doubtless,  an  advantage.  We  were 
left  alone  by  the  rest  of  the  world  like  the  wild 
ass  in  the  desert,  whereas,  had  there  been  less  salt 
water  intervening,  the  forces  of  tradition  or  imi- 
tation might  have  proved  too  strong  for  us  and 
our  essay  in  self  rule  not  have  maintained  that 
distinctly  novel  character  with  which  it  was  born. 

But  while  the  insularity  resulting  from  our 
great  distance  from  the  centres  of  European  cul- 
ture may  have  been  useful  in  guaranteeing  a  free 
and  untrammeled  development  of  those  striking 
political  theories  which  are  now  coming  to  be  ac- 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  29 

cepted  everywhere, — for  the  concerns  of  the  in- 
tellect (speaking  narrowly),  the  separation  has 
not  been  entirely  happy.  In  the  things  of  the 
mind,  in  matters  of  taste,  in  the  refinements  of 
social  intercourse,  is  it  not  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  communities  with  a  leisure  class  which  for 
upwards  of  a  thousand  years  has  had  scarcely  any 
other  business  to  mind  but  fixing  upon  what  is 
most  graceful,  elegant  and  harmonious,  should 
have  arrived  at  conclusions  of  the  highest  value 
for  the  seeker  after  perfection?  Again,  is  it  not 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  for  a  society  whose 
energies  so  far  have  been  largely  occupied,  thus 
to  speak,  with  the  blazing  of  trails  and  the  clear- 
ing of  forests — is  it  not  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  for  such  a  society  the  enunciations  of  old- 
world  civilizations  must  be  of  singular  utility? 
Yet,  because  Europe  is  so  far  away,  because  so 
few  Americans  in  proportion  to  the  mass,  come  in 
contact  with  European  usage  at  first  hand,  these 
two  great  civilizations  have  been  visibly  drifting 
apart,  and  in  many  things  Americans  are  setting 
up  for  themselves  standards  which  are  to  be  found 
nowhere  else  in  the  world. 

People,  in  a  new  society,  are  apt  to  think  they 
make  quite  novel  discoveries  in  social  arrange- 
ments, when  the  truth  is  they  are  merely  going 
through  a  rudimentary  experience  of  older  com- 
munities. A  concrete  example  or  two  will  serve 
to  illustrate.  Americans  fancy  that  their  custom 
of  allowing  young  women  to  go  about  without  the 
chaperon  common  in  Europe  is  a  step  in  advance 
of  transatlantic  progress, — whereas,  the  fact  of 
the  matter  probably  is,  that  the  various  European 
countries  tried  this  plan  some  hundreds  of  years 
ago,  and  when  they  were  quite  young,  and 
gradually  discarded  it  for  the  present  mode  be- 


30  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

cause  they  perceived  they  got  a  distinct  result 
(which  they  valued)  with  the  institution  of  duen- 
nas, and  did  not  get  it  without.  The  same  with 
the  present  American  female  preference  for 
equestrianism  en  cavalier.  In  England  in  the  time 
of  Queen  Elizabeth,  women,  at  any  rate  in  hunt- 
ing, rode  astride.  But  when  England  became 
more  polite  it  was  agreed  upon  all  hands  that  this 
was  not  the  most  graceful  fashion  in  which  the 
gentler  sex  could  embellish  the  equine  species 
and  so  the  observance  was  abolished.  Similarly 
it  is  probable  the  Egyptians  and  Assyrians  went 
through  the  same  aesthetic  evolution. 

But  the  question  arises — Where  is  the  utility  of 
trying  each  rude  beginning  for  oneself?  Why 
not  take  it  for  granted  in  such  matters  that  what 
the  maturest  and  politest  civilizations  are  doing 
is  what  we  also  will  wish  to  do  when  we  come  to 
be  mature  and  polite,  and  so  seek  to  imitate  them 
at  once  rather  than  spend  some  ages  in  unneces- 
sary rawness? 

In  the  realm  of  ideas,  one  may  rest  assured, 
there  is  no  permissible  allegiance  less  than  that  of 
a  citizen  of  the  world.  This  was  the  determina- 
tion of  Athens  in  her  glory  and  is  to  be  reckoned 
among  those  imperishable  apperceptions  which 
have  left  the  Greek  mind  amiable  and  fruitful  for 
lovers  of  light  while  the  world  shall  last.  In  the 
things  of  the  intelligence  anything  less  than  this 
universal  interest  tends  directly  to  provinciality. 
And  provinciality  always  stamps  a  civilization  as 
of  other  than  the  first  order.  I  have  ever  fancied 
this  willingness,  nay,  eagerness  to  learn  from  the 
best  masters  was  one  of  the  most  striking  mani- 
festations of  the  true  greatness  of  imperial  Rome. 
There  is  almost  a  kind  of  pathos  in  the  anxiety 
of  the  Romans  in  their  best  period  to  sit  at  the 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  31 

feet  of  Greek  teachers.     They  were  lords  of  the 
world,  as  far  as  the  lance  and  fasces  could  carry 
them,  and  yet,  far  from  trying  to  make  their  ruder 
speculations  fashionable,  far  from  trying  to  make 
them  prevail,   they  perceived  at  once  what  they 
were  not  masters  of  and  went  in  humble  search 
of  it.     If  the  Romans  could  bear  to  learn  of  others, 
where   is   the   kingdom    or   commonwealth    since 
whose   place   in   history  justifies   it  in   going   ex- 
clusively by  its  own  light?     Why  have  the  French 
long   been    esteemed    the    most    enlightened    na- 
tion in  Europe?      Because  ages  before  the  others 
they  sought  and  revered  the  treasures  of  Greece 
and   Rome   and   for   centuries   have   passionately 
cultivated  that  openness  to  ideas  which  has  only 
lately  become  fashionable  among  their  neighbors. 
In    truth,    were    the    position    not    temerarious 
toward   that   profound    moral   development,    the 
customs,   one  would  be  disposed  to  say  that  for 
persons  whose  powers  of  reflection  have  received 
some  encouragement  there  is  but  one  country  in 
the  world.      Its  boundaries  therefore  are  not  ex- 
tremely difficult  to  trace — it  stretches  from  Green- 
wich to  Greenwich  again.     For  lovers  of  light  it  is 
of  much  less  interest  whether  a  man  is  a  French- 
man, an  Englishman,  an  American  or  a  Senegam- 
bian,  than  whether  he  is  a  person  of  a  first-rate 
intelligence  or  not.     Most  national  boundaries  are 
largely  imaginary  lines,  and  that  in  more  senses 
than  one,  and  as  the  imagination  becomes  cooled 
and  the  intelligence  warmed  it  is  probable  that 
imaginary  lines  will  tend  rather  to  lose  their  sig- 
nificance outside  of  the  domain  of  pure  mathe- 
matics. 

Granting,  then,  that  a  spirit  of  nationalism, 
though  it  be,  perhaps,  not  the  largest  or  most 
adequate  conception  of  even  the  political  possi- 


32  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

bilities  of  mankind,  is  convenient  for  adminis- 
trative purposes,  is  commercially  profitable,  and 
is  not  necessarily  inimical  to  the  best  culture,  it 
should  be  our  care  to  see  that  it  does  not  usurp 
provinces  manifestly  superior  to  it.  In  this  sense 
the  world  of  ideas  is  super-political.  In  that  ele- 
vated atmosphere  the  ordinary  phenomena  of 
patriotism  are  a  little  expanded ;  it  is  patriotic 
to  prefer  not  what  chances  to  flourish  between 
certain  parallels  of  latitude  and  longitude,  be- 
cause it  does  flourish  there,  but  the  best  that  can 
be  found  anywhere,  and  because  it  is  the  best 
that  can  be  found  anywhere. 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  33 

CHAPTER  V. 
THE  STATE  AND  EDUCATION 

It  has  been  said  that  our  race  is  not  yet  enough 
civilized  to  justly  entrust  education  to  the  hands 
of  the  state.  That  men  will  never  be  really  civil- 
ized while  fanaticism  and  intolerance  in  one  of 
their  most  serious  concerns,  religious  belief,  con- 
tinue in  any  moving  strength  to  stalk  through  the 
world.  And,  indeed,  until  we  can  separate  the 
proper  business  of  this  life  from  our  hatreds  and 
strifes  over  the  conditions  of  the  next,  one  does 
succumb  for  an  instant  to  a  kind  of  misgiving. 
It  is  undeniable  that  in  recent  times  where  edu- 
cation has  been  handed  over  to  the  state,  often  the 
state  has  abused  its  office  and  been  frantically 
busy  indoctrinating  irreligion.  This  has  in  truth 
proved  a  catastrophe  not  only  for  believers  in  the 
supernatural,  but  for  the  cause  of  justice  and  in- 
telligence. A  fanatic  in  irreligion  is  surely  as  un- 
lovely and  unilluminated  a  being  as  a  fanatic  for 
its  opposite,  and  he  has  the  added  disadvantage 
that  in  the  sum  of  things  he  stands  for  human 
nature's  following  its  line  of  least  resistance, 
which  has  always  proved  a  singularly  fatal  affair 
for  human  nature. 

But  is  this  hostility  of  the  state  to  virtue  and 
religion,  in  our  day  so  aften  unmistakable,  at  bot- 
tom more  than  accidental?  May  we  not  reason- 
ably hope  with  the  increase  of  a  fuller  light  now 
gilding  the  horizon  to  observe  such  sinister  illu- 
minations eclipsed  and  quite  blotted  out?  It  is 
to  be  devoutly  hoped  this  is  our  portion,  for 
democracy  can  ill  afford  to  do  without  so  power- 
ful an  instrument  as  is  the  word  of  God  in  shaping 


34  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

its  destiny.  And,  perhaps,  after  all,  the  right 
spot  upon  which  to  lay  the  blame  for  state  intol- 
erance is  not  upon  ministerial  functionaries,  but 
upon  the  temper  of  the  people.  Why  are  the  uni- 
versities of  Paris  and  Heidelberg  unfriendly  to 
Christianity  and  the  university  of  Oxford  not  un- 
friendly to  it?  The  temper  of  the  people.  And 
if  you  appear  to  lose  your  people  through  the 
action  of  the  state,  is  not  the  fact  quite  otherwise, 
and  that  you  had  already  lost  them  the  moment 
the  state  began  to  tyrannize  over  belief?  For 
the  state  is  no  alien  or  superior  force,  it  is  ever 
the  creature  of  the  people;  even  in  an  autocracy, 
the  power  of  the  state  is  but  a  child  to  the  power 
of  the  people.  And  this  quite  without  revolution 
but  only  through  the  pressure  of  serious  interest. 
Of  course,  for  the  Christian  or  other  believer, 
freedom  of  religion  and  worship  is  paramount 
even  to  the  interests  of  culture,  and  if,  in  ex- 
tending the  action  of  the  state  in  order  that  intel- 
ligence might  more  widely  prevail,  he  should  per- 
ceive that  the  malice  of  men  would  always  warp 
this  power  to  the  detriment  of  the  supernatural, 
he  would  undoubtedly  prefer  to  let  things  go  on 
in  the  less  effective  channel  in  which  they  are  at 
present. 

But  we  will  assume  that  we  have  got  rid  of  re- 
ligious interference  from  the  state,  as  it  is,  in- 
deed, probable  we  shall,  and  our  surest  guar- 
anty for  this  rests  in  the  fact  that  intolerance  is 
unintelligent,  and  men  will  finally  come  to  see 
that  it  is. 

The  notion  of  the  instruction  of  youth  being  a 
public  function,  while  in  theory  of  a  most  re- 
spectable antiquity,  is  in  practice  rather  a  recent 
conviction.  Even  long  after  the  Church  lost  that 
predominance  in  education  which  it  once  exer- 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  35 

cised,  the  state  had  not  greatly  exerted  itself  in 
the  matter  and  almost  all  elementary  instruction 
was  in  the  hands  of  the  self-appointed  school- 
master. He  was  a  resident  small  merchant  of 
popular  learning.  He  taught  pretty  much  what 
came  into  his  head  on  the  spur  of  the  moment. 
He  developed  an  independence  of  curriculum  the 
tradition  of  which  has  come  down  to  our  own 
days  and  is  exemplified  in  the  existence  and  pow- 
ers of  local  boards  of  education. 

There  are  two  principal  objections  to  having 
public  instruction  under  the  control  of  provincial 
authority — the  lack  of  uniformity  in  the  courses  of 
study  and  the  liability  that  executive  direction  will 
not  be  in  the  hands  of  those  best  equipped  for 
the  task.  With  a  centralized  system  of  state  edu- 
cation both  of  these  would  disappear.  Begin- 
ning with  the  grammar  schools  the  programme 
for  each  grade  might  be  issued  from  a  Depart- 
ment of  Public  Instruction  at  Washington.  In 
place  of  the  thousand  text  books  for  a  given  sub- 
ject and  term  now  in  use  throughout  the  country, 
there  would  be  but  one.  That  one,  however, 
would  be  the  best  obtainable  for  the  purpose. 
Under  this  arrangement  there  should  be  little 
complaint  of  public  education  not  being  as  good 
in  one  part  of  the  country  as  another. 

It  is  in  the  literary  portion  of  the  programme  of 
studies  that  most  would  be  accomplished  in  thus 
entrusting  the  supervision  of  all  public  instruc- 
tion to  a  central  bureau.  The  multiplication  table 
is  not  apt  to  be  materially  improved  by  the  solici- 
tude of  high  government  officials,  but  school  read- 
ers and  histories  are.  All  of  the  exercises  in 
reading  (and  a  good  deal  more  time  would  be 
given  to  reading  that  at  present)  would  be  taken 
from  the  masters  of  literature  in  every  age  and 


36  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

country.  There  are  too  many  names  in  the  world 
which  are  celebrated  to  leave  room  for  one  not  a 
celebrity.  Thus  from  the  time  he  began  to  read 
at  all,  every  youth  who  was  state  educated  would 
be  familiar  at  least  with  some  fragment  from  all 
the  great  names  in  letters.  Then,  when  later  in  life 
he  really  began  to  acquire  a  first-hand  acquaint- 
ance with  the  best  that  has  been  thought  and  said 
in  the  world,  which  would  be  when  his  school 
days  were  quite  over,  he  would  not  find  staring 
him  in  the  face  an  entirely  new  republic  of  let- 
ters, but,  as  far  as  names  went  at  any  rate,  feel 
himself  among  old  friends. 

As  to  the  objection  that  many  of  such  selections 
compiled  from  works  of  genius  must  be  beyond 
childish  apprehension,  it  is  better  for  the  pupil 
to  read  masterpieces  and  not  understand  two 
sentences  together  than  to  be  a  perfect  exegetist 
and  scholiast  of  shabby  stuff  from  an  inferior 
hand  prepared  with  a  view  to  his  supposed  ca- 
pacity. The  writings  of  the  most  eminent  authors 
are  full  of  passages  of  simple  directness  and  with 
grace  and  beauty  added.  It  is  not  desirable  to 
seek  for  a  literature  more  elemental  than  may  be 
had  in  such  extracts.  Far  more  fortifying  would 
it  be  to  let  the  youthful  understanding  grow  up 
to  these  models,  reading  mechanically,  if  need  be, 
until  such  time  as  their  merits  were  perceived  by 
it.  And  the  crowning  good  of  thus  being  exclu- 
sively confined  to  the  best  is  that  if  there  is  any 
capacity  for  distinction  in  thought  or  emotion  in 
the  student's  soul  it  will  unconsciously  begin  to 
assert  itself. 

As  a  contrast  to  this  settled  purpose  of  learn- 
ing from  the  best  models  only,  we  have  heard 
of  a  school  text  book  on  literary  composition 
which  is  made  up  exclusively  of  leaders  taken 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  37 

from  an  American  monthly  magazine.  Think  of 
the  mendacity  of  thus  dedicating  the  most  vivid 
and  impressionable  years  of  a  lifetime  to  the 
commonplace  and  the  feeble! 

Under  the  guardianship  of  an  enlightened  cen- 
tral authority  for  public  education  such  a  misdi- 
rection of  energies  would  be  impossible.  Pro- 
vincial individuals  or  bodies,  inadequately 
equipped  for  the  task,  would  not  then  be  called 
upon  to  choose  either  manuals  or  subjects  of  study. 
Instead,  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of 
the  land,  from  the  grammar  school  to  the  uni- 
versity, the  youth  of  the  nation  should  be  apply- 
ing its  faculties  exclusively  to  the  best  that  had 
been  thought  and  said  and  done  in  the  world. 
Tall  talk  about  one's  own  country  which  is  so 
retarding  and  unintelligent  would  be  gradually 
and  good-naturedly  banished  by  exhibiting  its  ab- 
surdity. To  this  end,  in  the  particular  case  of  the 
United  States,  such  a  corrective  work  as  Matthew 
Arnold's  essays  on  America,  for  instance,  might 
be  introduced  into  the  public  schools  as  a  text- 
book. 

Th'-  present  tendency  in  various  parts  of  the 
republic  towards  dropping  Greek  and  Latin  from 
the  course  of  study  in  these  institutions,  or  leav- 
ing the  pursuit  of  them  optional  with  the  stu- 
dent, is  an  instance  of  the  weakness  and  inad- 
equacy of  provincial  supervision  of  the  interests 
of  education.  People  not  the  best  equipped  for 
judging  take  into  their  hands  the  decision  of 
whether  the  classic  tongues  and  classic  literature 
shall  be  any  longer  taught  the  youth  within  their 
jurisdiction.  Men  come  into  power  and  office 
who  believe  that  the  reason  Greek  and  Latin  have 
been  a  part  of  high  school  and  college  training  is 
that  the  practice  is  a  survival  of  the  middle  age 


38  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

when  there  were  no  other  literatures  worth  know- 
ing; but  that  now  we  have  something  equivalent 
or  superior  to  them  in  modern  languages,  indeed, 
in  our  own  tongue ;  or  they  believe  that  all  proper 
education  must  propose  some  directly  useful  end 
and  that  dead  languages  fail  to  establish  such  a 
claim;  or  they  have  themselves  missed  the  advan- 
tages of  a  classical  discipline  and  upon  grounds 
no  higher  than  personal  uneasiness  bear  a  kind 
of  hostility  to  it. 

Now,  with  the  control  of  public  education  en- 
trusted to  those  best  adapted  to  the  office,  instead 
of  allowing  the  opinions  of  such  men  to  prevail, 
people  might  be  brought  to  see  why  culture  has 
so  deep  and  abiding  an  interest  in  Greek  and 
Latin.  It  would  be  explained  to  them  that  as  to 
mere  facts,  or  practical  information,  or  even  as  to 
the  excitation  of  the  bare  animal  functions  of 
laughter  or  tears,  it  is  true  that  we  might  ignore 
the  literary  productions  of  Greece  and  Rome 
and  not  be  greatly  the  worse  off  for  it.  But  that 
there  is  another  sort  of  benefits  which  somehow 
are  secured  by  the  perusal  of  classic  models,  and 
to  which  the  study  of  the  finest  modern  produc- 
tions in  no  like  measure  contributes.  The  Greeks 
and  the  Romans  possessed  in  their  languages  in- 
struments of  singular  intrinsic  beauty.  With  these 
instruments,  doubtless  as  much  the  development 
of  their  peculiar  genius  as  the  ideas  which  they 
afterwards  served  to  immortalize,  they  were  able 
to  achieve  a  calmness,  largeness  and  elevation  of 
effect  which  seem  likely  to  remain  for  all  time 
the  highest  degree  of  excellence  attainable  in  lit- 
erary art.  In  an  exquisiteness  of  feeling  for  pro- 
portion, harmoniousness,  urbanity,  modern  litera- 
tures have  exhibited  no  capacity  for  dispossessing 
the  best  Greek  and  Latin  models.  It  is,  indeed, 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  39 

only  because  their  authors  have  had  the  advan- 
tage of  such  models  that  modern  productions  are 
as  good  as  they  are.  Why  is  the  university  of  Ox- 
ford the  most  distinguished  institution  in  the 
English-speaking  world?  Because  Oxford  has 
most  firmly  seized  this  truth  of  the  inestimable 
value  of  Greek  and  Latin  remains  in  any  fruitful 
pursuit  of  intellectual  distinction.  An  intelligent 
perception  of  just  why  classic  antiquity  means  so 
much  to  culture  is  the  bright  particular  tradition  of 
Oxford  and  will  publish  its  fame,  even  when,  if 
such  should  be,  the  darkness  of  these  times  shall 
have  installed  conchology  and  aerostatics  in  the 
chairs  of  Sophocles  and  Horace. 

The  direction  of  public  education,  then,  is  an 
immense  power,  a  power  far  too  precious  for  the 
ends  of  culture  to  be  allowed  to  remain  in  its 
present  diffuse,  confused,  opposed,  inchoate  state. 
The  very  act  of  making  education  a  function  of 
the  central  government  will  lend  to  it  a  character 
and  dignity  quite  absent  when  it  is  administered 
by  the  local  authority  of  the  several  states. 

It  is  apt  to  be  asserted  by  some  that  if  public 
instruction  be  entrusted  to  the  exclusive  care  of 
the  people  of  culture  there  is  danger  of  liberal 
studies  being  too  much  pursued  aud  useful  studies 
not  enough.  This  objection  will  doubtless  resolve 
itself  into  a  matter  of  party.  Believers  in  the  pre- 
dominant theory  of  education  hitherto  current  will 
say  that  they  entertain  the  gravest  doubts  as  to 
whether  any  technical  instruction,  as  it  is  called, 
should  be  imparted  in  schools  for  youth.  They 
will  maintain  that  a  state  school  is  properly  a 
place  where  training  is  supplied  in  the  liberal 
branches,  that  such  a  school  should  not  be  a  work- 
shop. They  will  say  that  handicrafts,  in  fact,  all 
gainful  pursuits  and  occupations,  are  best  ac- 


40  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

quired,  not  in  a  school,  but  in  an  apprenticeship  to 
a  working  master  in  such  crafts.  This  is  the 
"articling"  and  "apprenticeship"  of  our  fore- 
fathers, so  highly  regarded  in  former  ages,  and  the 
road  by  which  most  acquired  preliminary  train- 
ing in  their  daily  avocations.  It  is,  indeed,  the 
method  by  which  the  greater  part  of  mankind 
still  gains  adeptness  in  callings  pursued  chiefly 
to  get  money.  Lately,  however,  a  party  has 
sprung  up  with  a  new  philosophy  to  the  effect 
that  an  initiation  into  the  sublimities  of  the  hum- 
blest callings  should  begin  in  the  nursery.  The 
mechanic  in  futuro  should  be  set,  as  soon  as  ever 
his  apprehension  shows  signs  of  breaking  through 
his  skull,  to  contemplate  an  anvil  or  a  revolving 
saw;  the  grocer  by  dedication,  to  weigh  and  sort 
little  packets.  Doubtless,  without  the  greatest 
caution,  the  principles  of  this  sect  may  tend  to 
a  very  mean  way  of  thinking. 

But  even  if  the  lovers  of  light,  rather  than  of 
wheels  and  pistons,  had  the  upper  hand  and  the 
youth  of  the  country  got  very  little  else  but 
polite  learning  up  to  the  age  of  sixteen  or  seven- 
teen, would  it  be  such  a  hard  destiny,  and  would 
there  not  be  plenty  of  life  left  in  which  to  culti- 
vate faculties  to  serve  the  daily  needs  of  the  body? 
And  in  any  event,  let  us  not  despair  of  an  ample 
spirit  of  concession  and  compromise  on  the  part 
of  our  enemies,  the  men  of  culture,  they  having 
been  kept  out  of  any  participation  in  public  activ- 
ities until  their  spirits  must  be  mightily  reduced 
and  chastened. 

People  often  praise  the  effectiveness  of  our 
present  Post  Office  Department  with  its  inter- 
twinings  amongst  all  sorts  of  local  authority,  and 
yet  possessing,  as  a  bureau  of  the  national  gov- 
ernment, a  powerful  coherency  and  directness  of 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  41 

acting.  So,  too,  in  public  instruction  might  we 
look  for  parallel  excellent  results  by  confiding  the 
care  of  education  to  such  a  national  Department 
of  Education  as  has  been  previously  mentioned. 
Public  enlightenment  not  being  mere  mechancial 
routine,  as  is  the  conduct  of  the  post  office,  a  life 
tenure  of  office  in  this  national  board  of  education, 
so  to  speak,  is  of  the  highest  importance.  Life 
tenure  is  a  means  for  keeping  superiorities  in 
power.  In  most  other  public  employments,  such 
as  the  one  just  alluded  to,  the  post  office,  talents 
of  a  much  more  common  order  being  sufficient, 
there  are  always  a  large  number  of  men  in  the 
country  who  could  successfully  direct  them,  and 
the  service  suffers  little  or  not  at  all  from  frequent 
rotation  in  office ;  but  in  education  such  as  we  have 
been  supposing,  the  number  of  those  qualified  to 
administer  is  enormously  decreased,  the  time 
required  to  achieve  conspicuous  results  much 
longer  and  a  frequent  change  of  advisers  apt  to  be 
distinctly  disadvantageous. 

If  successive  political  administrations  are  al- 
lowed all  the  departments  of  government  but  two 
as  legitimate  spoils  of  office,  and  these  two,  new 
creations,  instead  of  subtractions  from  the  sum  of 
their  present  reward,  it  seems  that  no  great  rup- 
ture with  tradition  need  be  involved  in  setting 
up  a  Department  of  Education  and  a  Department 
of  Fine  Arts  upon  the  basis  of  life  tenure  of 
office.  We  have  a  luminous  analogy  in  the  United 
States  Supreme  Court,  so  no  really  novel  de- 
parture in  our  governmental  system  is  implied. 
Doubtless  in  a  very  short  time -these  two  depart- 
ments would  be  regarded  with  the  same  equanim- 
ity and  satisfaction  as  is  that  august  body. 

Perhaps  it  would  be  found  desirable  to  select 
teachers  for  the  state  schools  by  some  such  com- 


42  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

petitive  system  as  is  suggested  in  the  idea  of  West 
Point  cadetships.  Nominees  for  the  post  of  in- 
structor might  be  similarly  chosen  and  then  sent 
to  a  great  teachers'  college  situated  preferably  in 
the  metropolis,  as  from  the  beginning  every  even 
accidental  circumstance  is  to  be  taken  advantage 
of  in  ridding  the  future  teacher  of  any  taint  of 
provinciality.  Thus  a  familiarity  with  the  aims 
and  tradition  of  the  department,  an  esprit  de  corps, 
might  be  instilled  which  would  be  of  the  greatest 
advantage  in  securing  effective  co-operation. 

In  America  the  universal  passion  for  newspaper 
reading  makes  the  press  scarcely  less  important 
as  a  factor  in  popular  education  than  the  public 
school.  For  a  surprising  number  the  daily  jour- 
nals furnish  the  only  intellectual  stimulus  with 
which  they  are  acquainted.  For  them  all  the 
genius  of  Greece  and  Rome  and  modern  Europe 
has  labored  in  vain.  The  year  one  of  the  world 
for  them  is,  circa,  A.  D.  1900.  So  many  people 
seem  to  have  lost  sight  of  the  fact  that  from  the 
very  circumstances  of  its  preparation  a  modern 
newspaper  cannot  amount  to  anything  as  a  liter- 
ary production,  but  is  properly  only  a  convenient 
method  of  placarding  current  intelligence.  There- 
fore, the  common  satisfaction  exhibited  over  huge 
Sunday  issues  because  they  will  afford  a  whole 
day's  reading,  or  several  days'  reading,  thus 
usurping  the  proper  office  of  a  library,  is  a  melan- 
choly apparition  for  the  champions  of  the  doc- 
trine of  "the  best  that  has  been  thought  and  said 
in  the  world."  All  of  this  best  except  an  infinitesi- 
mal quantity, — a  minute  stream  which  trickles 
forth  as  the  final  contribution  of  each  passing 
decade — (and  some  decades  seem  to  contribute 
nothing  at  all)  is  on  library  shelves.  Thus  until 
newspapers  choose  to  reprint  the  best  books  in 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  43 

their  columns  they  can  have  no  standing  at  all 
as  a  substitute  for  serious  reading.  And  this 
would  be  still  true,  even  did  their  pages  represent 
the  labor  of  intelligent,  informed  and  gifted  men, 
(which  now  they  scarcely  ever  do),  because  no 
one  could  write  so  rapidly  as  is  exacted  of  the  pro- 
ducers of  newspapers  and  do  it  well;  because 
the  newspaper  writer  is  not  free  to  condemn  what 
he  knows  to  be  false,  if  his  editor  desires  mis- 
statement.  And  this  is  especially  true  in  the 
sphere  of  criticism  and  taste.  A  false  tone,  a 
false  tendency,  is  praised  or  extenuated  by  a  news- 
paper writer,  even  while  he  knows  it  to  be  false, 
because  he  understands  he  is  paid  for  writing 
what  he  is  told  to  write.  He  realizes  that  the 
alpha  of  his  calling  is  not  to  offend  the  suscepti- 
bilities of  either  the  ignorant  or  the  learned.  But 
if  he  cannot  avoid  offending  one  or  the  other,  to 
offend  the  learned.  They  will  forgive  him  sooner, 
and  if  they  do  not  their  enmity  is  much  less  ter- 
rible. In  short,  his  office  in  life  is  to  make  ignor- 
ance fashionable.  It  is  truly  pathetic  to  observe 
the  current  newspaper  proprietor's  anxiety  not 
to  put  ignorance  and  falsity  out  of  counte- 
ance.  Nothing  can  exceed  it  in  tristfulness  unless 
it  be  the  fashion  in  which  so  many  learn  all  that 
the  sun  and  light  of  heaven  have  for  them  through 
this  very  man's  daily  sinuosities,  venalities,  hy- 
pocrisies, ineptitudes. 

In  contemplating  all  of  which  one  is  tempted 
to  wish  for  some  sumptuary  enactment  in  the 
interest  of  print  paper — one  could  hardly  hope  to 
get  it  moved  in  the  interest  of  intelligence — limit- 
ing the  size  of  daily  journals  to  eight  pages  of 
news  and  as  many  additional  pages  as  might  be 
required  for  advertisers'  announcements.  Thus 
the  newspaper  would  be  reduced  to  what  it  ought 


44  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

to  be,  a  bulletin  of  current  events.  There  never 
was  such  a  newsful  day  in  the  world's  turning, 
that,  as  news,  its  occurrences  could  not  be  ade- 
quately chronicled  in  eight  pages  of  the  size  com- 
mon to  daily  journals.  Across  the  top  of  the 
front  sheet,  also  by  virtue  of  enactment,  would 
always  appear,  in  fair  characters,  some  such 
legend  as  this: 

"We  beseech  our  readers  to  observe  that  this 
is  merely  a  bulletin  of  news,  and  is  in  no  sense  to 
be  considered  a  literary  production,  nor  to  war- 
rant the  bestowing  of  many  minutes  upon  its  con- 
tents. Most  of  the  items  herein  contained  are 
either  of  no  importance,  or  disgraceful  and  should 
not  have  appeared  at  all,  or  through  the  exigencies 
of  mercantile  survival  have  been  either  wholly 
manufactured  or  tampered  with.  Consequently, 
we  earnestly  advise  any  one  who  has  more  than 
an  instant  of  time  for  reading,  to  apply  himself 
to  some  worthy  book/* 

But  as  this  sumptuary  enactment  may  appear 
a  little  Utopian  in  the  present  state  of  our  emer- 
gence, one  hastens  back  to  undisputed  practica- 
bilities. When  a  population,  then,  seems  deter- 
mined to  receive  all  its  light  from  newspapers,  the 
thought  suggests  itself,  Is  it  possible  for  us  to  get 
on  without  improving  those  newspapers!  It  is  a 
tradition  of  daily  journalism  in  America  how  great 
and  salutary  was  the  influence,  within  the  fra- 
ternity, of  one  publication,  the  New  York  Sun 
in  its  good  days  when  under  the  direction  of 
Charles  Dana.  Taking  the  hint  from  this  cir- 
cumstance, perhaps  the  establishment  of  half  a 
dozen  daily  journals  in  cities  so  selected  as  to 
geographically  cover  the  country  might  afford 
just  so  many  norms  of  what  a  newspaper  ought 
to  be.  Such  journals  should  bask  in  the  rose 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  45 

light  and  warmth  of  a  government  subvention. 
Thus  miraculously  freed  from  a  slavish  depend- 
ence upon  the  good  will  of  advertisers,  the  bane 
and  death  warrant  of  contemporary  journalism, 
these  publications  could  make  an  honest  effort  to 
see  things  in  the  light  of  reason.  Instead  of  being, 
as  at  present,  less  than  the  meanest  subscriber, 
(for  they  fear  to  offend  his  preconceptions  ever 
so  slightly)  they  would  be  above  the  sum  total 
of  readers,  an  indispensable  condition  for  pos- 
sessing any  value  at  all,  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
intelligence.  No  longer  canting  approvers  of  con- 
ventional sophisms,  venal  propagators  of  a  mean 
habit  of  thought,  they  might  civilly  take  their 
place  as  a  respectable  convenience.  A  newspaper 
can  never  be  more. 


46  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 


CHAPTER  VI 

AN  INJURIOUS  CONCEPTION  OF  THE 
FUNCTIONS  OF  THE  STATE 

There  appears  to  be  in  current  democracy  a  dis- 
position to  contract  the  sphere  of  the  state's  laud- 
able activities,  to  limit  it  within  strictly  utilitarian 
bounds.  One  would  fancy  that  when  the  people 
got  power  into  their  own  hands  they  would  not 
rest  content  with  having  only  a  measure  of  their 
necessities  satisfied  but  would  ask  their  ministers 
to  assume  all  of  the  functions  essential  to  a  full, 
attractive  and  adequate  national  existence.  Where 
the  powers  of  government  are  so  obviously  but 
a  mere  piece  of  machinery  for  the  execution  of 
the  will  of  the  people  as  they  are  in  a  modern 
democracy,  this  non-participation  of  the  state  in 
a  nation's  intellectual  concerns  must,  it  seems,  rest 
upon  a  fundamental  misconception  of  most  serious 
character.  What  else  can  it  be  taken  to  indicate 
but  that  people's  ideal  of  satisfactory  political 
administration  is  an  instrumentality  concerned 
only  with  securing  to  them  the  highest  attainable 
degree  of  material  well  being.  They  appear  to 
have  conceived  a  government  responsible  for 
securing  a  due  observance  of  statutes,  for  for- 
warding the  interests  of  property  and  trade  within 
a  commonwealth,  and  extending  them  abroad,  for 
developing  such  common  conveniences  as  will 
contribute  to  the  ease,  comfort  or  financial  profit 
of  the  people  at  large,  but  as  scarcely  remotely 
concerned  with  the  intellectual  prosperousness  of 
its  citizens.  This  matter  is  left  to  the  individual. 
Whether  it  is  thought  that  intellectual  culture  is 
too  unimportant  to  freight  the  ship  of  state,  or 
whether,  like  religion,  it  is  considered  a  subject 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  47 

of  too  much  delicacy  to  permit  of  interference 
with  individual  conscience,  or  whether  it  is 
believed  the  state  could  not  lend  effective 
assistance  in  such  a  juncture,  the  fact  remains, 
that  one  of  the  most  powerful  forces  for 
the  humanization  and  happiness  of  society  is  left 
quite  out  of  any  calculation  of  the  public  good. 
The  posture  of  the  case  seems  to  indicate  that 
there  is  a  hesitancy  in  the  popular  mind  about  the 
rationale  of  the  question — a  suspicion  that  there 
may  be  two  or  several  bests,  or  that  what  is  best 
at  one  time  may  not  be  at  another,  or  that  what 
each  individual  likes  is  the  best  for  him,  and  so 
forth. 

The  clear  doctrine  that  there  is  only  one  best, 
and  that  the  united  consent  of  mankind  in  the 
long  run  has  the  gift  of  infallibility  in  seizing  this 
best,  seems  still  to  require  much  preaching  among 
the  children  of  modern  democracy. 

But  while  any  such  prejudices  continue  to  exist, 
it  may  be  of  service  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  in 
our  proposals  for  admitting  to  more  prominence 
amongst  us  the  visible  works  of  culture,  we  urged 
the  setting  apart  from  the  central  din  and  tempest 
of  state  machinery  our  two  suggested  depart- 
ments of  Education  and  Fine  Arts.  If  people  in 
general  could  be  brought  to  consider  them  some- 
thing off  by  themselves,  something  beyond  the 
sphere  of  depredation  of  the  practical  politician, 
indeed,  even  something  minor, — if  that  would 
tend  to  preserve  their  integrity, — one  might  be 
well  satisfied.  This  would  be  in  keeping  with 
the  fact  that  their  administration  was  entrusted  to 
a  minority, — not  in  contravention  of,  but  as  a 
refinement  of  application  of  the  republican  for- 
mula,— and  save  the  busy  man  and  the  thought- 
less man  the  necessity  of  tormenting  themselves 


48  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

as  to  whether  they  were  right  or  wrong, — of  corn- 
ing to  decisions  in  a  province  a  little  outside  the 
course  of  their  studies. 

In  short,  it  is  just  because  there  exists  this  con- 
fusion in  the  public  mind  as  to  the  propriety  of  the 
state's  interference  in  the  interests  of  culture  that 
the  two  proposed  departments  are  apt  to  be  so 
helpful  to  the  man  who  is  not  a  specialist.  They 
will  remove  all  necessity  of  his  acting  but  once, 
i.  e.,  in  assenting  to  their  establishment.  This 
done,  their  function  will  be  to  afford  those  who 
have  the  capacity,  the  means  of  judging  and  en- 
joying if  they  be  prepared,  or  of  study  and  light 
if  their  opportunities  have  been  less  than  was 
desirable.  And  even  those  who  seem  to  be  born 
with  no  capacity  for  delighting  in  beauty,  harmo- 
niousness,  serenity,  elevation,  perspective,  will  be 
the  better  for  these  departments,  for  they  cannot 
avoid  having  it  thrust  upon  them  that  their  world 
is  not  the  fairest  goal  which  humanity  proposes 
to  itself,  but  an  inferior  resting  inadequate  to  many 
of  the  demands  of  the  human  spirit,  and  whose 
unhappy  destiny  is  to  be  ever  really  losing  the 
day  even  while  it  seems  to  triumph. 

It  is  one  of  the  sorrowful  facts  of  life  that 
whatever,  involving  any  outlay  in  money,  is  rare 
or  fine,  cannot  stand  of  itself,  and  whatever  in 
like  circumstances  is  commonplace,  hideous  or 
base,  flourishes  like  the  proverbial  bay  tree.  Com- 
panies of  players  devoting  their  talents  exclu- 
sively to  the  production  of  masterpieces  soon  find 
themselves  in  difficulties;  the  maintenance  of  a 
collection  of  statuary  like  that  in  the  Louvre  re- 
quires government  aid,  while  a  waxworks  exhi- 
bition, a  chamber  of  horrors,  has  within  it  that 
which  immortalizes.  Thus  it  falls  out  that  those 
whose  tastes  are  unformed  or  low  need  never  be 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  49 

at  a  loss  for  suitable  entertainment  and  stimulus. 
No  one  need  trouble  himself  about  looking  out  for 
their  satisfactions.  They  will  be  taken  care  of 
forever — they  will  take  care  of  themselves — they 
are  Commerce. 

But  when  one  has  chosen  and  followed  reso- 
lutely for  a  long  time  what  is  elevated,  noble, 
uncommon,  he  is  apt,  under  popular  governments, 
to  find  that  he  has,  so  to  speak,  disposed  of  his 
birthright.  He  can  no  longer  receive  pleasure 
from  what  suffices  for  the  majority  of  his  coun- 
trymen, he  can  no  longer  enjoy  what  he  was  born 
to;  he  can  no  longer  enjoy  what  he  can  get,  and 
there  is  no  means  of  getting  what  he  could  enjoy. 
If  people  in  general  knew  what  a  real  addiction — 
and  in  the  present  posture  of  things,  inconvenience 
— an  addiction  to  choiceness  is,  if  they  could  con- 
ceive of  it  freed  from  the  shadow  and  suspicion 
of  affectation,  as  it  frequently  exists,  doubtless 
they  would  be  more  patient  with  the  complaint  of 
the  minority  that  it,  as  well  as  the  victorious  ma- 
jority, should  be  afforded  means  of  gratifying  in- 
tellectual needs. 

While  there  might  at  first  sight  seem  some 
injustice  (according  to  the  strict  republican  for- 
mula) in  asking  all  of  the  people  to  contribute  to 
the  maintenance  of  institutions  which  only  a  re- 
stricted number  would  be  likely  to  use  or  enjoy, 
this  is  more  specious  than  actual.  To  illustrate 
from  analogy.  People  are  taxed  for  the  care  and 
improvement  of  harbors  and  waterways,  and  not 
with  special  regard  to  a  vicinity  benefited,  but  all 
Americans  pay  for  such  public  works  thousands 
of  miles  from  their  homes  and  in  places  of  which 
they  perhaps  have  never  even  heard  the  names. 
But  the  opportunities  thus  created  are  open  to  all, 
are  at  least  indirectly  beneficial  to  all,  and,  if  per- 


50  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

chance  an  individual  has  an  insuperable  repug- 
nance to  navigation,  he,  as  the  lawyers  say,  "will 
not  be  heard  to  complain."  Again,  every  one 
assists  in  the  support  of  our  state  universities,  and 
yet  how  many  never  avail  themselves  of  their 
benefits.  One  hears  no  complaint  on  this  score 
that  the  universities  are  an  unfair  burden  or  a 
kind  of  class  privilege.  The  obscurest  is  free  to 
attend  if  he  chooses,  and  the  advantages  of  having 
the  means  of  higher  education  close  at  hand  are 
thought  to  justify  the  taxation  for  their  support 
of  thousands  who  will  never  employ  them.  In 
this  latter  instance  the  injustice,  if  injustice  could 
be  supposed,  might  be  even  more  keenly  felt ;  for, 
being  excluded  in  one  significant  moment  at  the 
threshold  of  life,  there  is  never  afterwards  any 
redress.  Once  the  swift  years  of  youth  are  past, 
in  the  ordinary  course,  the  doors  of  the  university 
are  closed  to  one  forever.  For  thousands,  severity 
of  fortune  has  left  no  opportunity  in  its  proper 
season,  and  when,  if  so  be,  early  struggles  issue  in 
altered  circumstances,  the  improvement  has  come 
too  late. 

But  in  the  halls  of  such  happy  lyceums  as  we 
propose  the  enquirer  will,  indeed,  never  be  too 
old  to  learn.  Demanding  no  abstention  from 
necessary  avocation,  accommodating  themselves 
happily  to  his  hours  of  freedom,  there  they  would 
stand  forever,  invitations  in  sculptured  marble  to 
sooner  or  later  tease  his  curiosity  into  investiga- 
tion, and  then  by  the  power  of  visible  state  and 
beauty  charm  his  rough  nature  to  a  rarer  love 
for  that  which  is  perfect  though  susceptible  of 
being  only  felt  or  conceived. 

In  the  towns  and  cities  of  the  middle  ages 
men  commonly  lived  in  what  we  would  call  little 
more  than  huts,  all  except  a  handful,  but  they  had 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  51 

one  consuming  passion,  their  cathedral  must  be 
their  glory.  And  so  they  created  a  single  build- 
ing as  great  and  beautiful  as  it  was  given  to  hand 
and  brain  to  rear.  Left,  each  to  his  own  re- 
sources, scarcely  any  among  them  might  command 
the  least  pretentious  abode,  and  so  they  combined 
their  goods  and  their  energies  and  ever  afterwards 
all  lived  in  the  shadow  of  a  Parthenon.  And 
the  happiness  of  the  middle  age,  and  the  greatness 
of  the  middle  age  is  the  history  of  that  cathedral 
and  the  love  of  beauty  and  order  and  nobleness 
and  strength  which  it  wrought  in  the  hearts  of 
those  who  lived  within  sight  of  its  towers. 

The  day  is  gone  for  us  to  combine  in  the  rais- 
ing of  cathedrals.  But  there  is  still  the  oppor- 
tunity to  unite  in  the  rearing  of  two  or  three  noble 
public  buildings  in  every  considerable  city,  to  be 
devoted  to  the  purposes  of  art.  Such  structures 
must  be  splendid  in  dimension  and  as  handsomely 
wrought  as  we  can  fashion  them.  No  considera- 
tions of  cost  should  deter  us.  If  it  be  deemed 
expedient,  even  let  successive  generations  be 
called  upon  to  bear  a  share  of  this  burden.  They 
will  pay  it  cheerfully  and  thank  us  for  having 
been  born  amidst  the  monuments  of  ancestors  so 
enlightened. 

Such  repositories  and  temples  of  art,  though 
variously  distributed,  would  in  our  proposed  plan, 
be  under  the  control  and  supervision  of  an  arm 
of  the  general  government — the  Department  of 
Fine  Arts.  All  expense,  both  in  their  erection 
and  maintenance,  would,  likewise,  be  borne  by 
the  country  at  large.  A  tax  for  this  purpose  might 
be  imposed  upon  incomes  beyond  a  certain  aggre- 
gate or  the  general  taxes  so  apportioned  as  to 
include  the  necessary  funds.  There  might  be  two 
classes  of  such  public  buildings,  first  and  second. 


52  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

The  first  class,  on  a  somewhat  ampler  scale  than 
the  other,  would  be  provided  for  cities  of  over 
five  hundred  thousand  inhabitants.  When  a  place 
rose  to  such  dignity  and  population  it  would  be 
the  business  of  this  department  to  erect  in  that 
municipality  a  state  library,  a  state  theatre,  and  a 
state  gallery  of  art.  The  proceeding  would  much 
resemble  what  now  takes  place  when  a  city  de- 
sires a  central  postoffice  building. 

Designs  for  these  structures  would  be  com- 
petitive and  of  course  all  the  world  would  be 
desired  to  compete.  Suggestions  from  Mr.  Bubb 
would  not  come  more  highly  recommended  than 
from  others  merely  because  Mr.  Bubb  was  an 
ornament  of  the  local  art  or  architectural  horizon 
and  "had  a  stake  in  the  country,"  and,  moreover, 
Mr.  Bubb's  host  of  friends  were  in  favor  of  "home 
industries."  As  for  Mr.  Bubb  or  Mr.  Bubb's  local 
confreres  exclusively  being  allowed  to  enter  the 
lists,  such  a  proceeding  would  not  be  even 
dreamed  of.  Democracy  has  been  far  too  deeply 
injured  already  by  this  kind  of  patriotism.  Instead, 
those  in  authority  would  never  tire  of  explaining 
to  Mr.  Bubb's  friends  that  an  industry  is  an  indus- 
try, and  an  art  is  an  art,  and  begging  them  not  to 
confuse  the  two,  and  cautiously  letting  them  into 
the  secret  that  if  an  Italian  or  a  Frenchman  or  a 
Senegambian  could  design  a  more  beautiful  or 
worthy  building  than  any  one  else  they  could  get 
track  of,  all  that  was  wanted  was  to  know  his 
address. 

Then,  besides  filling  this  library  with  the  best 
that  had  been  thought  and  said  in  the  world,  and 
the  art  gallery  with  the  best  carbon  photographs 
of  the  most  celebrated  statues  and  paintings  and 
other  monuments  of  art  that  had  been  made  in 
the  world,  and  as  choice  a  collection  of  originals 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  53 

as  could  be  had  for  reasonable  outlay,  the  De- 
partment of  Fine  Arts  would  train  for  each  of  its 
theatres  an  orchestra  for  serious  music  and  a  com- 
pany of  players.  Besides  these,  it  would  keep  in 
its  service  several  troupes  of  opera  singers  which 
should  at  convenient  seasons  appear  successively 
at  its  different  theatres  of  both  classes.  It  must 
be  superfluous  to  hint  what  a  discriminating  and 
jealous  eye  the  department  would  keep  on  the 
scores  these  musicians  rendered,  the  dramas  these 
actors  performed,  and  the  operas  these  singers 
made  vocal.  And  then  the  manner  in  which  its 
artists  should  acquit  themselves  of  their  various 
tasks!  What  scholarly  understanding  of  the  work 
they  had  to  do,  what  refinement  of  feeling,  what 
sympathy,  what  sensibility  to  the  precious  heritage 
bequeathed  to  us  by  genius!  And  to  the  living 
author  how  splendid  a  reward  for  the  long  appren- 
ticeship of  his  talents  to  excellence,  that  his  pro- 
duction should  be  included  in  the  permanent  art 
resources  of  so  elegant  an  institution. 

At  present  the  almost  total  absence  of  such 
public  memorials  of  society's  interest  in  the  beau- 
tiful, true  and  abiding  must  strike  foreigners  visit- 
ing our  country  as  one  of  the  gravest  shortcom- 
ings of  democratic  dominion.  For  our  part,  we 
would  like  to  fancy  that  the  common  titles  these 
blessings  go  by  in  the  old  world,  such  as,  the 
Royal  Library,  the  Royal  Gallery,  the  King's 
Theatre,  may  have  inspired  in  the  children  of 
those  just  come  out  of  bondage  a  kind  of  panic, 
unreasoning  night-fear  of  art  foundations  which 
the  high  noon  of  freedom  will  soon  dissipate  and 
clear  away.  We  would  cling  to  anything  rather 
than  believe  that  Americans  have  deliberately  de- 
cided these  things  are  unnecessary.  In  the  first 
case,  to  vary  our  metaphor,  the  tares  and  brambles 


54  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

might  be  smoothed  away;  in  the  latter,  the  ster- 
ility of  the  soil  would  defy  the  husbandman  for- 
ever. 

Let  us  rather  imagine  that  the  possessors  of  this 
fair  and  boundless  land  of  America,  when  the 
thrill  and  hurry  of  sounding  its  inexhaustible  nat- 
ural resources  shall  have  a  little  abated,  and  the 
hot  blood  of  such  pacific  and  enthralling  con- 
quest is  succeeded  by  the  genial  glow  of  a  meri- 
dian bountifully  supplied  with  all  the  delights 
of  the  body — let  us  believe  that  these  ambitious 
populations  will  then  turn  with  an  equal  ardor  to 
satisfying  the  demands  of  the  soul.  Let  us  be- 
lieve that  we  shall  then  see  rise  in  a  score  of  opu- 
lent cities  testimonies  in  granite  and  marble  that  a 
free  and  happy  commonwealth  can  confer  upon 
genius  and  learning  all  of  the  lustre  which  they 
ever  extorted  from  royal  master. 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  55 

CHAPTER  VII. 
OTHER  THINGS  WE  FORGOT 

In  surveying  the  work  of  the  men  who  first 
charted  our  course  of  empire  one  is  apt  to  be  a 
little  astonished  at  the  absence  of  any  provision 
for  the  fostering  of  art  by  the  strong  arm  of  the 
state.  How  so  admirable  a  polity  could  have 
been  conceived,  and  yet  one  of  the  most  obvious 
agencies  for  rendering  a  civilization  distinguished 
and  illustrious  overlooked,  is  perhaps  only  to  be 
reasonably  accounted  for  by  the  fever  and  inse- 
curity of  those  troubled  times. 

A  programme  for  civil  society  concerted  in  fugi- 
tive assemblies  while  a  price  rested  upon  the  heads 
of  its  movers  has  every  claim  to  our  indulgence 
even  though  we  may  believe  an  essential  to  its 
ultimate  serviceableness  was  omitted.  Doubtless 
the  intrepid  innovators  to  whom  we  all  owe  so 
much  felt  that  if  they  did  but  make  a  beginning 
in  securing  to  mankind  those  untold  blessings 
which  ought  to  flow  from  putting  off  forever  the 
iron  collar,  successive  generations  of  Americans 
would  rejoice  in  a  destiny  which  gave  into  their 
hands  the  pleasant  task  of  chiseling  with  tracery 
the  plain-cut  granite  of  their  forefathers. 

The  dawn  of  our  political  history  was  a  time 
of  struggle  atvay  from  things  almost  as  much  as 
towards  them, — away  from  kings,  away  from 
nobles,  away  from  that  strange  alliance  of  the 
church  with  the  state.  And  in  this  anxiety  to  be 
relieved  of  what  they  felt  unwise  restraints  upon 
the  body  and  the  spirit,  our  early  legislators  might 
be  pardoned  for  falling  into  distrust  of  almost  all 
European  preconceptions.  Those  unsettled  days 


56  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

were  evidently  not  favorable  to  nice  discrimina- 
tion and  what  had  made  Europe  splendid  was 
very  apt  to  be  lumped  with  what  had  troubled 
her  ease  for  centuries.  The  noble  enthusiasm  for 
befriending  the  struggles  and  triumph  of  genius 
which  in  the  old  world  has  so  distinguished  those 
in  authority  from  the  times  of  Pericles  and 
Augustus  to  our  own  age,  seems  to  have  been  one 
of  the  good  things  which  slipped  our  minds  dur- 
ing the  slight  stiffness  of  that  powder-choked 
good-bye. 

It  being  human  nature,  it  seems,  to  revere  some- 
body, and  a  regard  for  the  man  of  talent  or  genius 
having  somehow  unaccountably  got  lost  in  our 
hasty  withdrawal  from  transatlantic  influences, 
as  has  been  said,  it  was  not  long  before  we  ten- 
dered our  homage  to  a  new  and  showy,  if  less 
imposing  candidate — the  man  of  wealth.  It  is 
strange  how  in  a  democracy  this  worship  should 
have  proved  so  attractive.  Perhaps  it  but  indi- 
cates the  deep  inextinguishable  craving  in  the 
human  heart  for  distinction,  and  having  parted 
with  the  observances  and  tradition  which  might 
have  furnished  us  with  intellectual  and  nobler  re- 
sources for  its  satisfaction,  we  were  left  with  no 
alternative  but  to  fall  down  before  idols  of  silver 
and  gold. 

But  really  how  much  more  precious  to  a  com- 
monwealth is  a  man  of  genius  than  a  man  of 
wealth.  How  much  more  the  man  of  genius  can 
give  us  than  the  richest  nabob.  It  is  said  that 
America  has  at  the  present  time  at  least  one  citi- 
zen possessed  of  a  billion  dollars.  Let  us  suppose 
that,  struck  like  Herostratos  with  the  idea  of  per- 
petuating his  name  by  some  strange  extravagance, 
he  should  decide  to  distribute  his  treasure  equally 
amongst  his  countrymen.  There  would  be  the 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  57 

sum  of  ten  dollars  for  each.  How  slight  then  are 
the  resources  of  the  most  princely  fortune.  But 
the  proprietor  whose  riches  are  in  ideas  undergoes 
no  such  shrinkage  in  the  distribution  of  his  wealth. 
He  can  divide  his  possessions  between  us  and  give 
every  one  of  us  all  he  has — nay,  not  only  can  he 
thus  befriend  his  own  countrymen  but  all  the 
world  may  equally  take  of  his  bounty.  Even 
posterity,  those  countless  millions  yet  unborn,  are 
alike  co-heirs. 

The  author  of  a  great  book,  the  painter  of  a 
great  picture,  the  creator  of  lofty  harmonies,  the 
humanizer  of  our  sentiments,  the  improver  of  our 
manners,  discoverers  in  the  liberal  and  useful 
sciences,  inventors  in  the  mechanic  arts — all  con- 
fer upon  the  state  not  only  material  blessings  but 
a  renown  above  any  calculation  in  terms  of  the 
market  place.  Yet  frequently  such  men,  so  val- 
uable to  others  and  to  society  at  large,  strange 
as  it  must  seem,  find  the  providing  of  the  bare 
necessaries  of  life  interfere  sharply  with  the  nobler 
work  which  they  came  into  the  world  to  do. 
Often  many  of  their  best  years  are  thus  consumed 
in  harassing  struggle  for  little  more  than  food  and 
drink.  They  do  not  do  all  that  they  might  have 
done  and  it  is  probable  that  much  which  they  do 
accomplish  is  the  worse  for  it,  less  finished  or  less 
gracious,  because  of  these  long-continued  priva- 
tions. Thus  is  their  youth  and  maturity  oppres- 
sively spent,  and  the  reward  of  some  of  the  most 
striking  services  to  society,  when  it  does  arrive, 
often  comes  merely  in  the  isolated  commendation 
of  the  judicious,  rather  than  any  improvement  of 
worldly  circumstance ;  or,  as  not  infrequently  hap- 
pens, any  recompense  at  all  is  withheld  until  death 
remove  them  from  the  frowning  scene  of  their 
labors  and  tardy  fame  lay  upon  the  cold  sepulchre 


58  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

the  wreath  of  immortality.  How  many  rare 
spirits  whose  gift,  though  not  commercially  profit- 
able, was  none  the  less  precious  for  mankind,  have 
spent  the  last  years  of  their  lives,  not  only  without 
honor  or  applause,  but  in  actual  want! 

There  are  some  things  the  state  cannot  do  for 
poet  or  sage.  It  cannot  much  hasten  the  slow, 
toilsome,  baffled  effort  of  humanity  to  seize  upon 
truth  or  beauty  ahead  of  its  years — to  appropriate 
to  itself  additions  of  light  which  will  be  the  com- 
mon property  of  a  succeeding  age.  But  there  is  one 
thing  it  can  do,  and  that  is  to  be  sure  that  at  least  a 
mere  money  reward  is  received  by  those  whose 
labors  and  talents  have  in  any  marked  degree 
merited  the  recognition  of  their  countrymen.  And 
to  this  end  what  is  needed  is  some  arrangement 
whereby  a  permanent  fund  should  be  at  the  dis- 
posal of  government  to  provide  suitable  rewards 
and  pensions  for  those  who,  in  letters,  the  arts  of 
design,  scientific  research,  mechanical  invention, 
have  made  any  notable  contribution  to  the  sum  of 
their  country's  knowledge,  wisdom,  taste,  or  po- 
liteness. And  in  order  to  employ  usefully  and 
beneficently  means  privately  bequeathed  for  the 
advancement  of  learning,  which  we  now  so  often 
see  left  under  fantastic  or  ill  chosen  conditions,  let 
the  managers  of  this  fund  be  empowered  to  re- 
ceive legacies  from  all  lovers  of  light  who  may 
wish  to  remember  it  in  the  disposition  of  their 
property. 

Doubtless  in  some  quarters  proposals  of  this 
character  will  meet  with  no  great  favor.  With 
many  the  sole  test,  alas,  of  merit,  the  sole  appeal 
to  their  sympathies,  is  a  favorable  appearance  in 
the  day-book  and  ledger.  Any  art  or  any  sci- 
ence, any  work,  or  any  aim  which  is  not  self-sup- 
porting has  upon  it  the  visible  marks  of  the  father 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  59 

of  iniquities.  Such  people  will  be  apt  to  cry  out 
against  what  they  term  literary  paternalism  and 
exclaim  that  any  poor  man  who  benefits  society, 
unless  it  is  previously  willing  to  pay  for  the  bene- 
fits, is  violating  a  first  principle  of  sound  morals 
and  commerce  and  that  instead  of  rewards,  pun- 
ishment is  what  he  is  likely  to  get,  and  justly,  for 
thus  presuming  to  interfere  with  heaven's  highest 
law,  the  law  of  supply  and  demand. 

To  these  conscientious  objectors  we  can  only 
reply  that  we  originate  nothing;  that  all  states 
which  have  greatly  told  in  history  have  found  it 
to  their  advantage  to  encourage  a  love  and  quick- 
ness for  national  grandeur  in  the  domain  of  the 
arts  and  sciences,  of  intelligence,  flexibility, 
lucidity;  and  that  this  is  one  of  the  means  which 
they  have  profitably  employed.  There  is  abun- 
dant testimony  that  in  proportion  as  a  people  is 
highly  civilized,  sensitive  to  obligations,  not  only 
does  it  recognize  a  peculiar  propriety  in  recom- 
pensing, either  by  occasional  grants  or  periodic 
allowances,  those  who  have  distinguished  them- 
selves in  its  interest,  but  that  wherever  the  things 
of  the  mind  are  thus  esteemed  by  the  state  they 
are  apt,  even  for  the  meanest  of  its  citizens,  to  as- 
sume an  importance  and  reality  which  is  of  the 
highest  value  to  culture.  And  this  we  freely  own 
is  the  end  of  all  our  speculations,  to  set  up  the  in- 
telligence, and  the  things  of  the  intelligence,  in 
high  estimation  and  to  surround  the  pursuit  and 
diffusion  of  them  with  such  adjuvant  circum- 
stances of  material  pomp  and  power  that  their 
mere  externals  shall  excite  the  enthusiasm  and 
curiosity  of  mankind. 

Rights  in  literary  property  and  other  produc- 
tions of  taste  and  genius,  have  to  some  extent  al- 
ready received  attention.  But  here,  too,  we  may 


60  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

profitably  borrow  a  hint  from  the  temper  of  the 
most  enlightened  Europeans.  The  term  of  our 
copyright  is  too  brief.  Were  it  fixed  at  one  hun- 
dred years  instead  of  fifty-six,  it  would  at  least 
have  the  advantage  that  no  author  should  outlive 
his  proprietorship.  Often  the  more  valuable  a 
literary  work  is,  the  slower  will  be  its  progress  in 
the  world,  so  it  may  be  just  beginning  to  gain  that 
universal  currency  which  its  merits  have  finally 
assured  to  it  when  the  present  period  of  copy- 
right protection  expires.  The  years  during  which 
it  was  confined  for  an  audience  to  the  small  circle 
of  the  judicious,  years  during  which  for  the  most 
part  it  reposed  on  booksellers'  top  or  back 
shelves, — its  thin  years, — are  amply  protected, 
but  when  at  length  the  harvest  approaches,  the 
author's  right  of  property  in  it  may  almost  have 
disappeared.  Even  if  a  writer  should  not  live 
long  enough  to  himself  gather  in  the  pittance  of 
his  industry  and  genius,  let  us  at  least  arrange  it 
so  that  his  children  or  legatees  may. 

And  this  brings  us  to  a  consideration  which  at 
present,  we  own,  infringes  on  the  speculative. 
Should  an  author  be  permitted  to  dispose  of  his 
copyright  at  all  during  his  lifetime?  Publishers 
perhaps  will  be  disposed  to  murmur  at  the  incon- 
venience occasioned  by  constituting  an  author's 
right  in  his  productions  a  kind  of  privilege  some- 
thing like  an  entail  abroad ;  and  doubtless  lawyers 
clever  enough  to  defeat  any  benefits  which  he 
might  thereby  experience,  will  be  found,  but  we 
must  remember  that  an  author  who  is  at  all  worthy 
of  our  endeavors  has  really  two  callings  to  mind 
in  place  of  the  single  one  which  engages  most  of 
the  rest  of  us,  he  must  create  beautiful  things  and 
he  must  get  money.  So  let  us  not  be  too  nice 
about  stretching  a  point  for  him,  should  it  prove 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  61 

that  his  welfare  would  be  forwarded  by  such  ex- 
pansive indulgence. 

That  a  universal  international  copyright  under- 
standing should  have  so  long  troubled  men's 
minds  to  arrive  at  is  one  of  the  wonders  of  a  push- 
ing age.  One  would  as  soon  have  expected  in- 
telligent societies  to  be  still  waiting  for  the  Berne 
convention.  To  have  writers  and  publishers  shak- 
ing their  ink-stained  fists  at  each  other  from  op- 
posite shores  of  the  Atlantic  was  a  downright 
scandal  in  the  republic  of  letters.  No  man,  reader 
or  publisher,  was  ever  yet  injured  by  royalties 
paid  to  authors  and  the  contention  that  he  was  is 
partial  and  interested  pleading.  The  attitude, 
then,  of  a  nation  in  abetting  its  meaner  sort  of 
printers  and  chapmen  in  thus  pilfering  from  other 
nations,  is  something  that  the  new  democracy 
should  be  too  high-spirited  to  tolerate. 

Doubtless  many  other  wise  and  gracious  serv- 
ices to  art  and  learning  might  be  appropriately 
undertaken  by  the  state,  and  in  time  will  be.  Only 
democracy  must  first  become  wise  in  its  gener- 
ation and  see  and  seize  truths  in  this  province 
which,  long  ago  perceived  by  monarchy  and  even 
by  tyranny,  gave  them  and  still  give  them  a  kind 
of  dangerous  fascination  even  for  the  children  of 
popular  rule.  For, — and  it  cannot  be  repeated 
too  often, — the  human  spirit  loves  distinction, 
and  goes  counter  to  its  deepest  instincts  when  it 
rests  in  the  vulgar  and  commonplace,  and  a  na- 
tion, although  perhaps  unconscious  of  its  malady, 
may  see  the  day  when  this  neglect  of  the  advice 
of  the  philosophers  and  sages  shall  sap  the  foun- 
dation of  empire,  and  men  exclaim,  despite  a 
thousand  visible  blessings,  "Away  with  all  this 
ennui,  let  us  return  to  the  Golden  Age!" 


62  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

CHAPTER  VIII 
PATRONS  OF  ART  AND  LETTERS 

The  introduction  of  some  adequate  machinery, 
whatever  it  be,  into  the  wisdom  of  single-class 
democracy — some  saving  instrumentality  which 
will  recognize  that  man  does  not  live  by  bread 
alone — this  grace  will  come  finally,  but  it  will  not 
come  soon. 

And  the  operation  of  the  state  in  the  concerns 
of  culture — the  only  strong,  constant,  adequate 
action  possible  in  a  modern  community — will 
perhaps  be  postponed  indefinitely  unless  lovers 
of  light  exert  themselves  earnestly,  even  passion- 
ately, in  its  behalf. 

I  suppose  the  first  thing  to  be  done  in  getting 
people  in  general  to  see  that  the  state  is  important 
to  culture,  and  culture  is  important  to  the  state, 
is  to  get  them  to  see  that  culture  is  important  at 
all. 

It  is  becoming  more  and  more  the  custom  in 
America  for  men  of  wealth  when  they  withdraw 
from  active  business  to  cast  about  for  some  means 
of  being  serviceable  in  a  large  way  to  the  society 
in  which  they  live.  This  inclination  is  a  most 
hopeful  sign  of  our  progress  in  ripeness  and  savor. 
Even  young  heirs  often  are  no  longer  content  to 
derive  all  their  fame  from  the  mere  presence  of 
so  much  gold,  like  a  Treasury  building,  but  are 
anxious  to  transmute  a  part  of  it  into  active 
benevolence. 

Doubtless  the  future  of  culture  in  Ainerica  rests 
largely  in  the  hands  of  such  persons.  They  are 
in  a  position  of  great  advantage  for  bringing  their 
countrymen  to  see,  first  that  culture  is  important, 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  63 

and  then  that  its  demands  in  their  fullness  cannot 
be  successfully  met  by  any  power  less  than  the 
state.  In  the  doing  of  which  they  are  serving 
their  own  purposes  as  certainly  as  those  of  the 
humblest  citizens,  because  even  the  possession  of 
a  colossal  fortune  will  not  make  possible  to  them 
certain  pleasures,  until  a  great  many  other  people 
are  also  bent  upon  enjoying  them.  They  will 
have  no  fine  theatres  nor  intelligent,  cultivated 
players  until  there  are  audiences  for  them.  They 
will  not  experience  that  reflected  elegance  and 
taste  in  general  society  which  flows  from  acade- 
mies and  learned  associations  until  academies  are 
regarded  otherwise  than  as  the  extravagance 
of  a  few  infatuated  visionaries.  In  other 
words,  with  all  his  wealth,  and  its  power,  the  rich 
man  is  not  sufficient  for  himself.  That  is  to  say, 
his  happiness  is  not  rounded  in  the  existence  of  a 
specimen  of  culture,  but  in  an  atmosphere  of  culture. 
Even  though  we  place  no  reprehension  in  the  self- 
ishness of  it,  his  private  playhouse  with  himself 
alone  for  an  auditory  is  not  enough.  He  will 
never  receive  the  full  measure  of  the  beauty  and 
comeliness  of  fine  things  until  he  has  others  to 
enjoy  them  with  him,  until  there  is  a  diffused  sym- 
pathy for  them. 

So  much  for  the  enlightened  rich  man ; — as  for 
the  enlightened  poor  man,  he  of  course  cannot 
have  even  the  bare  mechanics  of  fine  things — he 
cannot  have  his  masterpieces  even  in  an  empty 
theatre.  He  can  have  only  desolation  fretting  in 
the  wilderness.  And  by  the  mere  alchemy  of 
numbers  he  might  possess  what  even  the  rich  man 
cannot  buy! 

Thus  the  first  task  of  the  enlightened  rich  man 
and  the  enlightened  poor  man  is  to  make  other 
enlightened  men,  both  rich  and  poor,  until  they 


64  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

are  in  such  numerical  respectability  as  to  demand 
something  for  themselves.  Individuals  are  almost 
nothing,  but  a  calm,  determined,  clear-thinking 
minority  is  always  a  thorn  to  the  most  intrenched 
and  victorious  majority.  It  wears  down,  (and 
sooner  than  we  would  imagine),  the  fluctuating, 
passionate,  unreasoned  opposition  of  its  enemies, 
until  at  length  in  very  impatience  they  are  quite 
willing  to  treat  with  it. 

When  the  people  of  culture  have  got  this 
steady,  serene,  indomitable  minority,  where  now 
we  find  only  despairing  individuals,  then  they  may 
proceed  to  attack  the  final  citadel,  the  participa- 
tion of  the  state.  In  working  for  the  minority 
which  is  to  do  so  much  for  us,  the  enlightened  rich 
man  must  act  first.  The  enlightened  poor  man 
will  support  him  and  strengthen  his  arm  by  ap- 
plause, gratitude,  adhesion  and  such  small  change 
as  commonly  falls  to  the  lot  of  a  necessitous 
philosopher. 

The  curtain  rises,  then,  on  a  few  resolute,  en- 
lightened rich  men.  In  olden  and  less  diplomatic 
times  they  would  have  put  on  bucklers,  sallied 
forth  and  brought  people  either  to  culture  or 
perdition.  But  we  have  changed  all  that.  The 
day  for  commanding  populations  to  do  things  is 
gone  forever.  Americans  believe  that  in  a  really 
polite  and  high-spirited  age  when  you  address 
the  people,  you  asfc  them  to  do  things.  So  these 
seven  new  champions  of  Christendom,  in 
place  of  battle  axes,  are  going  to  employ 
sheets  of  paper,  and  in  lieu  of  battering 
rams,  sextuple  printing  presses.  In  their 
great  elucidative  drama  of  preparing  the  way 
they  purpose  issuing  books  and  periodical 
publications.  They  will  publish  a  monthly  review. 
This,  doubtless  contrary  to  the  reader's  expecta- 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  65 

tion,  will  not  be  crammed  from  cover  to  cover 
with  the  one  text.  To  the  eye  of  the  ordinary 
seeker  for  the  delights  of  pavement  literature  it 
will  present  no  great  difference  in  outward  ap- 
pearance or  variety  of  contents  from  the  common 
treasures  pf  newsmen's  stalls,  but  somewhere  in 
every  number  of  this  magazine  will  lurk  the  poi- 
soned pill,  the  propagandist  article, — the  reason 
for  the  publication's  existence— disguised  perhaps 
under  a  hundred  shapes,  but  always  there.  Of 
course  nothing  will  appear  in  the  periodical  which 
is  not  as  worthy  and  artistic  as  can  reasonably  be 
procured,  but  only  one  sermon  to  an  issue.  The 
final  effect  of  this  publication  is  apt  to  be  in  its 
perpetualness.  Men  may  come  and  men  may  go, 
but  it  will  appear  forever.  Ancients  shall  mum- 
ble over  it  who  as  children  spelled  their  letters 
from  its  pleasant  type,  for  it  will  be  subsidized, 
and  unlike  mortal  journals,  the  only  readers  it 
must  have  are  proofreaders.  Other  perusers  it 
will  always  welcome  in  its  genial,  serene  way,  but 
their  defection,  if  such  be,  will  touch  it  not.  Cir- 
culation figures,  that  Plutonian  arithmetic  which 
gnaws  at  the  heart  of  self-propelled  gazettes  will 
be  to  it  but  a  pale  jest  to  lighten  a  winter  after- 
noon. The  price  to  the  public  will  be  as  low  as 
possible,  ten  cents,  perhaps,  and  the  distribution 
general,  so  that  there  will  be  no  considerable  town 
or  free  library  where  it  is  not  obtainable. 

The  seven  new  champions  of  Christendom  will 
also  publish  freshly  written  books.  And  this 
chiefly  because  people  will  not  read  the  old  books. 
In  stating  the  case  for  culture  there  is  almost 
nothing  new  to  be  said,  there  is  scarcely  a  new  way 
left  to  say  what  is  old.  If  people  would  go  to  a 
few  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans  and  some  half 
score  of  the  moderns  they  would  have  everything 


66  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

there  is  to  be  written,  and  written  better  than  it 
can  be  at  present.  But  almost  nobody  but  scho- 
lars will  go  to  these  sources,  and  of  course  the 
seven  new  champions  have  on  their  side  ajl 
scholars  already  (not  to  mention  that  "majorities" 
are  not  gained  with  scholars.)  Readers  will  not 
go  to  the  masters,  not  because  these  authors  are 
difficult  or  they  dislike  them,  but  because  they 
are  not  new  authors.  Well,  the  seven  champions 
are  Fabians,  and  are  disposed  to  make  the  best 
of  this  perversity  of  contemporary  populations, 
and  so  they  will  endeavor  to  have  the  case  for 
culture  often  re-stated  by  living  writers,  since  the 
present  punishment  for  literary  immortality  is  not 
to  be  read. 

The  supporters  of  these  books  and  periodicals 
will,  however,  be  quite  fixed  and  stern  on  one 
point  with  all  of  those  who  supply  their  presses. 
And  that  is,  that  invective,  and  angry  declama- 
tion, and  all  varieties  of  violently  insisting  must  be 
forborne.  Moreover,  from  Plato  to  Ruskin,  it 
has  been  the  custom  to  testify  to  a  sense  of  dis- 
appointment and  chagrin  that  proposals  were  not 
more  eagerly  taken  up  and  acted  upon  by  the 
multitude.  This  pensive  attitude  will  be  elegantly 
avoided  by  our  present  crusaders  because  they 
will  not  set  their  hearts  upon  getting  anything  at 
all  done.  If  they  can  but  induce  a  few  in  their 
generation  to  examine  and  reflect  upon  the 
grounds  for  doing  the  things  which  they  advocate, 
they  will  feel  that  a  great  gain  has  been  accom- 
plished. They  will  be  persuaded  that  if  a  large 
number  of  the  people  would  familiarize  them- 
selves with  noble  and  adequate  ideal  conditions, 
even  if  they  should  never  set  on  foot  any  actual 
reformations,  nothing  but  good  could  come  of  it. 
They  will  have  faith  that  if  men  carry  about  in 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  67 

their  fancies  a  fair  and  lofty  ideal  civilization,  what 
they  do  in  the  world  of  the  actual  will  be  the 
better  for  it. 

Our  protagonists  will,  at  first  at  any  rate,  not  be 
anxious  to  have  their  canvases  very  detailed  and 
minute,  profiting  by  the  fate  of  the  social  efforts 
of  two  or  three  distinguished  English  writers  of 
the  last  century,  who,  laying  down  a  programme 
of  reconstruction  detailed  to  the  last  jot  and  tittle, 
seem  to  fail  to  excite  the  interest  and  sympathy  of 
succeeding  generations  as  deeply  as  they  might 
had  they  contented  themselves  with  merely  trying 
to  infuse  the  spirit  of  progress  and  amelioration. 
Readers  coming  afterwards  want  patience  for  all 
this  fancifulness,  this  exactness  and  concreteness 
of  application,  or  the  proposals  become  old  fash- 
ioned, or  prove  illusory,  whereas,  the  noble  and 
elevated  ideas  which  underlie  and  prompted  them, 
remain  fresh  and  attractive  always.  This  avoid- 
ance, as  far  as  may  be,  of  all  immediacy,  of  all 
petulance,  and  scolding,  and  the  common  uneasi- 
ness of  *'a  man  with  a  mission,"  will,  doubtless, 
bring  them  round  to  their  object  by  the  shortest 
way,  for  nothing  is  more  Greek  (which  is  to  say, 
in  intellectual  matters,  finally  fruitful)  than  an 
attitude  of  serenity,  elevation  and  detachment. 
Of  course  it  may  be  objected  that  this  habit  of 
mind  is  in  itself,  in  our  modern  world,  almost 
genius,  but  it  will  at  least  be  the  ideal  of  our  con- 
templated propaganda.  Scarcely  anything  is 
more  injurious,  particularly  to  a  man  of  great  lit- 
erary abilities,  than  the  fear  that  if  he  does  not 
get  a  thing  done  in  his  own  lifetime  he  will  not 
get  it  done  at  all.  In  a  concern  so  delicate  and 
difficult  as  the  practical  works  of  intellectual  cul- 
ture this  anxiety  is  apt  to  be  well-nigh  fatal.  Con- 
sequently, if  for  a  long  time  the  seven  new  cham- 


68  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

pions  (or  seventy  if  may  be)  do  not  get  anything 
done  they  will  not  be  disconcerted,  only  if  they 
may  get  a  little  thought.  They  will  endeavor,  as 
far  as  possible,  to  confine  their  activities  to  the 
things  of  the  mind,  freely  owning  that  they  have 
no  programme  to  offer  as  to  material  well-being, 
or  increase  of  it,  in  this  commonwealth,  the  wis- 
dom of  its  governors  in  such  respect  having  been 
tested  for  upwards  of  a  hundred  years,  the  work 
of  their  hands  growing  more  imposing  every  day ; 
but  insisting  patiently  that  they  have  suggestions 
to  make  for  the  intellectual  well-being  of  this  com- 
monwealth which  under  present  influences,  like- 
wise in  operation  for  upwards  of  a  hundred  years, 
has  been  growing  shabbier  every  day.  Thus 
standing  against  false  tendency,  which  heretofore 
has  had  the  field  so  largely  to  itself,  if  for  a  while 
no  more  is  accomplished  than  to  promote  a  toler- 
ance in  the  population  for  views  opposed  to  its 
own,  something  will  have  been  done.  For  Amer- 
icans have  been  fast  becoming  the  most  thin- 
skinned  race  of  the  earth  and  soon  would  have 
no  skin  at  all,  the  full  tragedy  of  which  can  per- 
haps only  be  apparent  to  the  medical  fraternity. 
Having  presented  to  intending  patrons  of  art 
and  letters  this  new  field,  in  which  some  of  them 
could,  perhaps,  be  more  conspicuously  useful  to 
culture  than  by  the  common  method  of  endowing 
private  institutions  of  learning  and  research,  our 
final  emphasis  with  respect  to  means  is  not  on 
their  ambitiousness  nor  extent  of  distribution,  but 
on  their  permanence.  If  such  publications  are  not 
from  the  beginning  guaranteed  a  long  life  inde- 
pendent of  the  exigencies  of  commercial  survival, 
then,  perhaps,  nothing  is  to  be  gained  by  attempt- 
ing  them.  Not  the  Maecenas  who  is  impatient  for 
any  sudden  practical  results,  is  called  to  this  labor, 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  69 

but  he  who  can  drop  his  acorn  quietly,  proceed 
on  his  way  rejoicing,  content  in  the  knowledge, 
that  whether  he  contributes  to  any  practical 
changes  or  not,  he  will  at  least  supply  an  elegant 
entertainment  to  some  hundreds  or  thousands  of 
cultivated  men  and  women,  who  in  their  turn  will 
scarcely  be  apt  to  leave  unsung  the  praises  of  their 
benefactor,  nor  his  memory  without  honor. 


70  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

CHAPTER  IX 

THE  ETERNAL  IN  TIME 

The  science  of  the  beautiful  and  appropriate, 
contrary  to  what  appears  to  be  the  impression  of 
many  at  the  present  time,  may  scarcely  be  said  to 
be  a  progressive  science.  Though  not  quite  fixed 
and  stationary,  such  as  are  some  of  the  depart- 
ments of  mathematics,  for  instance,  yet  indeed,  its 
laws,  boundaries  and  objectives  may  be  regarded, 
for  practical  purposes,  as  settled,  immutable, 
definitive. 

And,  doubtless,  a  great  deal  of  the  popular 
disinclination  to  seek  after  and  be  governed  by 
the  conclusions  of  the  past  in  this  province,  springs 
from  just  the  persuasion  that  what  is  called  taste, 
and  a  right  and  adequate  conception  of  the  appro- 
priate and  distinguished  in  the  fine  arts,  in  social 
fife  and  manners,  in  the  individual's  moral  and 
intellectual  attitude  toward  himself,  are  matters 
of  uncertain  stability,  perhaps  as  susceptible  of 
progress  and  refinement  as  is  applied  chemistry 
or  mechanical  invention. 

But,  in  truth,  the  case  is  far  otherwise.  Rela- 
tively early  in  our  present  society's  development 
(if  we  conceive  this  period  of  development  as  co- 
incident with  the  beginnings  of  credible  history) 
it  was  given  to  mankind  to  arrive  at  deductions 
and  productions  in  the  province  of  the  beautiful, 
harmonious  and  amiable,  which  have  not  lost  their 
authority  nor  pre-eminence  to  the  present  day,  and 
which,  if  one  may  judge  at  all  of  anything  in  the 
course  of  human  destiny,  will  never  be  dethroned 
from  the  place  which  they  have  occupied  for 
more  than  two  thousand  years.  Perhaps  it  is  not 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  71 

too  much  to  say  that  at  this  happy  epoch  the  race 
reached  a  degree  of  perfection  in  some  capital 
aspects  of  the  noble,  elevated  and  rare,  which  it 
has  not  only  been  unable  to  realize  since,  but 
which  it  will  never  again  equal,  surely  never  ex- 
ceed. That  is  to  say,  man  in  that  age  succeeded 
in  fixing  for  himself  the  limits  of  what  is  possible 
to  the  species. 

Thus  it  is  apparent  that  if  one  follows  anything 
else  but  what  was  valued  by  the  best  minds  of 
such  an  epoch,  he  is  following  something  /ess, 
and  that  he  cannot  be  doing  otherwise  than  fol- 
lowing something  less.  Consequently  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  lay  too  much  stress  on  the  significance  that 
the  aesthetic  conclusions  of  classical  antiquity  must 
always  have  for  succeeding  ages.  It  is,  then, 
profound  as  they  are,  and  perfect  as  they  are, 
not  the  individual  productions  in  themselves,  even 
of  the  noblest  minds  of  Greece  and  Rome,  which 
are  of  the  supremest  value  to  us, — it  is  the  intel- 
lectual atmosphere  from  which  they  sprang,  which 
made  them  possible.  In  the  arts  of  design,  noth- 
ing could,  perhaps,  be  more  elegant  and  flawless 
than  the  Hermes  of  Praxiteles  or  the  Parthenon, 
and  yet  it  is  not  this  visible  perfection  of  line  and 
proportion  which  renders  these  productions  so 
precious  a  heritage  of  the  race,  it  is  the  intellectual 
and  spiritual  aroma  out  of  which  they  grew,  and 
which  they  possess  the  unique  virtue  of  transmit- 
ting in  some  degree  to  posterity.  Similarly  the 
history  of  Thucydides,  the  Republic  of  Plato,  a 
drama  of  Sophocles,  are  not  to  be  finally  regarded 
as  a  history,  a  sociological  treatise,  a  play,  they 
are  to  be  valued  as  supreme  art  works  which  keep 
alive  and  in  the  world  a  largeness  of  view, 
grandeur  of  conception,  sensitiveness  to  beauty 
and  perfection  of  form,  which  can  be  kept  in 


72  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

the  world  by  no  other  means,  and  which,  once 
out  of  the  world,  leave  the  world  rather  a  sorry 
humdrum  place,  such  as  it  was  before  they  came 
into  it. 

It  is  perhaps  a  tribute  to  the  imperativeness 
there  is  deep  in  human  nature  for  beauty  and  an 
escape  from  the  commonplace,  that  once  a  society 
has  submitted  itself  to  the  refinements  of  civiliza- 
tion, its  first  intellectual  impulse  is  thus  towards 
the  development  and  expansion  of  those  ideas  of 
order,  proportion  and  harmony,  in  which  the  spirit 
finds  its  peculiar  satisfaction,  and  among  the  vis- 
ible fruits  of  which  are  the  arts  of  design,  music, 
and  poetry.  Whether  the  fact  was  that  man 
could  not  well  rest,  or  direct  his  energies  into  other 
paths  until  he  had  first  given  expression  in  this 
province  to  his  matured  powers,  or  whether  the 
nature  of  the  subject  lends  itself  to  consummate- 
ness  in  a  shorter  space  of  time,  at  any  rate,  what 
happened  has  left  the  theory  of  the  beautiful  and 
appropriate  upon  more  secure  foundations  than 
perhaps  any  other  important  subject  of  philosoph- 
ical inquiry. 

In  this  connection  it  is  interesting  to  observe 
how  much  more  man's  views  as  to  what  is  just 
or  unjust,  moral  or  immoral,  are  subject  to  change, 
than  his  conviction  as  to  what  is  beautiful,  dis- 
tinguished, harmonious,  or  hideous,  common- 
place, banal.  Aristotle's  distinctions  as  to  pas- 
times and  pursuits  which  are  elegant  or  'liberal'* 
and  others  which,  though  useful,  are  illiberal,  in 
the  main  holds  good  today  after  more  than  two 
thousand  years  of  social  experiment,  while  the 
institution  of  human  slavery  which  seemed  a  ne- 
cessity to  the  most  enlightened  of  the  Athenians, 
has  long  since  excited  the  indignation  of  civilized 
societies.  Thus,  outside  of  the  exact  sciences,  in 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  73 

perhaps  no  department  of  human  endeavor,  has  it 
seemed  possible  to  arrive  at  such  a  degree  of  final- 
ity as  in  the  province  of  the  beautiful,  harmo- 
nious, and  appropriate.  Even  in  religion,  that 
supremely  important  effort  of  humanity  to  reach 
definite  and  immutable  conclusions  as  to  super- 
natural aspects  of  its  duties,  obligations  and  des- 
tiny, it  appears  that  nothing  like  the  same  degree 
of  unanimity  has  been  attainable.  And  in  theo- 
ries of  civil  polity  we  have  similar  illustration. 
How  long  has  the  world  debated  whether  prop- 
erty is  best  held  in  individual  ownership  or  in 
common?  and  the  question  is  not  yet  settled.  But 
what,  in  the  fine  arts,  was  beautiful  and  har- 
monious to  the  oligarch  in  the  age  of  Pericles,  is 
beautiful  to  the  communist  today. 

And  not  only  classic  antiquity,  but  the  pol- 
ished portions  of  medieval  and  modern  Europe, 
have  for  centuries  contributed  a  slow,  premedi- 
tated affirmation  to  those  ideas  of  grace,  pro- 
priety, elegance,  distinction,  which  have  so  at- 
tracted enlightened  societies  everywhere. 

The  chivalry  of  the  Middle  Ages  seems  to  have 
been  in  its  essence  a  widespread  and  picturesque 
effort  to  bring  back  into  the  lives  of  men  the 
lofty  and  urbane  conceptions  which  in  the  tur- 
moil and  confusion  incident  to  the  fall  of  Roman 
civilization  had  quite  disappeared  from  active  so- 
ciety. Culture  shared  the  fate  of  imperial  do- 
minion, but  the  human  spirit  could  not  for  long 
remain  satisfied  with  the  merely  vegetative  ex- 
istence which  it  was  invited  to  embrace.  A 
world  without  poetry,  for  distinction  is  the  ap- 
plication of  poetry  to  the  ordinary  concerns  of 
human  experience,  was  found  to  defy  the  powers 
of  endurance  of  any  but  a  savage.  Wanting  the 
sure  taste  and  sense  of  proportion  which  charac- 


74  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

terized  their  classical  ancestors,  the  inventors  of 
chivalry  were,  it  is  true,  led  into  a  thousand  ex- 
travagances, but  their  very  appearance  among 
men  serves  as  a  testimony  that  the  splendid,  the 
elevated,  and  rare,  though  they  lose  dominion  for 
a  time,  will  ever  retake  their  conquests  when 
society  emerges  from  the  wild  state. 

It  is  well,  then,  to  remember  in  these  days  of 
unsettlement  and  progress  in  so  many  of  the 
physical  and  social  sciences  and  in  the  mechanic 
arts,  that  we  possess  in  the  enunciation  of  the 
beautiful,  graceful  and  harmonious,  conclusions, 
so  to  speak,  abiding  and  eternal.  And  it  should 
be  a  source  of  peculiar  gratification  to  those  who 
desire  to  see  culture  and  its  works  spread  and 
prevail,  that  this  is  so.  Surely  it  is  the  happiness 
of  society  that  in  an  agency  so  immediately  con- 
cerned with  relieving  our  daily  existence,  with 
making  it  full  and  interesting,  there  is  presented 
to  the  seeker  after  a  humane  life  so  much  that 
has  been  finally  determined,  so  little  that  is  tenta- 
tive or  provisional. 

Followers  of  culture  will,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
be  friends  to  the  past.  They  will  resolutely  com- 
bat the  popular  temptation  in  times  so  largely  and 
radiantly  given  over  to  a  general  confusion  of 
ideas,  that  the  past  must  be  in  the  wrong  merely 
because  it  is  the  past.  They  will  be  disposed  to 
expostulate  with  the  champions  of  an  exclusive 
modernity  and  to  exclaim  that  if  the  physical 
sciences,  economics,  politics,  the  mechanic  arts, 
and  even  religion,  seem  all  laid  at  the  feet  of  the 
deity  of  revolution,  surely  these  might  be  thought 
enough  to  satisfy  its  busy  apostles  and  stay  their 
restless  hands  in  a  field  quite  incapable  of  im- 
provement from  hasty  and  undisciplined  genius. 
Believing,  as  they  do,  that  other  ages  have  be- 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  75 

queathed  to  us  an  imperishable  good  in  a  province 
so  important  and  so  essential  to  man's  happiness, 
they  will  be  ever  jealous  to  preserve  such  labors, 
enhance  their  reputation,  and  extend  the  range 
of  their  operation. 

Innovators  will  fare  but  poorly  at  their  hands. 
In  America,  for  instance,  they  will  bend  all  their 
energies  to  prevent  the  polite  going  upon  record 
as  unreservedly  endorsing  the  present  level  of 
taste.  They  will  stoutly  maintain  that  it  should 
be  with  the  greatest  hesitation  that  we  declare  the 
essays  of  our  present  men  of  genius,  Mr.  Cohan's 
dramatic  productions,  for  instance,  more  capable 
of  affording  intellectual  satisfaction  than  those  of 
Sophocles,  and  the  glories  of  Mr.  Budd  Fisher's 
pencil  better  suited  to  our  apprehensions  than 
those  of  Raphael's.  If  successful  in  influencing 
us  in  this,  they  might,  after  heated  passions  on 
both  sides  had  somewhat  subsided,  even  scan  the 
horizon  for  some  bold  and  infatuated  adventurer 
capable  of  promoting  a  conspiracy  against  our 
comfort  to  the  extent  of  a  re-introduction  of 
Sophocles  and  Raphael. 

The  term  re-introduction  is  employed  design- 
edly because  people  are  apt  to  tell  us  that  the 
United  States  are  a  new  country,  that  they  will 
mellow  in  time,  and  that  then  intellectual  culture 
will  come  into  its  own.  But  the  facts  seem  to  be 
that  instead  of  acquiring  age,  the  United  States 
are,  as  time  passes,  contrary  to  all  hitherto  ascer- 
tained natural  laws,  acquiring  youth — are,  indeed 
becoming  a  newer  country  every  year.  They 
seem  to  have  grown  prodigiously  newer  than  they 
were  several  generations  ago  when  their  chief  men 
of  letters  were  writers  such  as  Washington  Irving 
and  Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  The  latter  were,  in- 
deed, men  somewhat  impressed  with  the  debt 


76  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

of  art  and  civilization  to  preceding  centuries,  and 
if,  relatively  speaking,  they  lived  in  log  cabins, 
their  intellectual  environment  was  of  stone  and 
marble,  whereas  today,  Americans  appear,  physic- 
ally to  occupy  abodes  of  stone  and  marble,  and, 
intellectually,  log  cabins.  And  the  log  cabins 
seem  in  a  fair  way  to  shade  off  to  tepees. 

If  then,  we  in  America  possessed  such  friends 
as  we  have  been  supposing,  they  would,  doubt- 
less, do  their  best  to  persuade  us  that  it  is  a  calam- 
ity to  forget  that  of  all  man's  efforts  to  arrive  at 
truth  and  finality,  those  concerned  with  estab- 
lishing the  definition  of  what  is  eventually  grace- 
ful, appropriate,  harmonious,  distinguished,  ele- 
gant, both  in  the  beautiful  arts  and  in  social  life 
and  manners,  have  been  incomparably  the  most 
brilliant  and  successful.  That  it  is  a  calamity  for 
any  civilization  to  be  unacquainted  with  this  truth, 
or  to  knowingly  disregard  it,  and  through  an  un- 
lovely sort  of  self-assertion  go  counter  to  the 
voice  of  accumulated  centuries.  That  a  society 
would  sadly  confuse  its  terms  which  should  bend 
itself  to  the  creating  of  a  new,  and,  necessarily 
lesser,  intellectual  world,  because  it  had  found 
itself  capable  of  establishing  a  brighter  mechanical 
and  material,  or  wood  and  wire  world. 

In  fine,  such  beneficent  antagonists  would  be 
apt  to  represent  to  us  that  our  present  national 
need,  as  far  as  things  of  the  mind  are  concerned, 
is  not  to  discover  something  new,  but  to  discover 
something  old.  And  that  the  more  we  familiarize 
ourselves  with  the  best  that  has  been  already  ac- 
complished, the  more  will  we  be  impressed  with 
its  peculiar  excellence  and  consummateness,  until 
at  length  we  will  experience  not  only  a  willingness 
but  an  anxiety  to  submit  our  own  wayward  judg- 
ments and  performances  to  those  critical  touch- 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  77 

stones,  sublimated  of  all  ages,  which  have  reared 
splendid  and  imperishable  monuments  in  what- 
ever societies  they  have  been  earnestly  cultivated 
and  sincerely  revered. 


78  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

CHAPTER  X. 

THE  STATE  AND  RELIGION 

There  are  many  people  who  are  persuaded 
of  the  benefits  to  the  cause  of  culture  which  must 
flow  from  the  strong  arm  of  the  state  being  em- 
ployed in  its  behalf,  yet  who  confess  a  genuine 
uneasiness  in  one  particular.  They  apprehend 
that  to  extend  and  exalt  the  supervisory  powers 
of  the  central  government  is  to  endanger  com- 
plete liberty  of  religious  profession  and  worship. 
And,  in  truth,  to  judge  from  some  aspects  of  the 
question  in  the  past,  nay,  from  what  with  no  great 
effort  we  discern  going  on  about  us,  such  fears 
may  not  be  entirely  groundless. 

But  a  new  philosophy  must  be  born  in  this 
matter,  doubtless  is  at  the  moment  being  born  in 
this  matter.  In  the  first  place,  every  one  examin- 
ing the  course  of  history  during  the  last  twenty- 
five  hundred  or  three  thousand  years,  must  be 
now  satisfied  that  an  amicable  and  genuine  sep- 
aration of  Church  and  State  is  for  the  best  inter- 
ests of  mankind;  is,  in  truth,  imperative.  In  past 
ages  not  only  has  the  state  been  hampered  and 
embarrassed  by  the  willingness  of  religions  and 
churches  to  be  at  the  helm  of  things  in  general 
and  in  particular,  but  religion,  too,  has  suffered 
grievously  because  of  its  close  connection  with 
the  state.  On  the  whole,  notwithstanding  the 
vociferation  on  the  other  side,  it  is  perhaps  not 
going  too  far  to  affirm  that  in  this  impracticable 
alliance,  religions  and  churches  have  sustained 
deeper  wounds  than  states. 

It  has  been,  it  is,  and  it  doubtless  always  will 
be,  an  impracticable  alliance.    The  difficulty  is  not 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  79 

quantitative,  it  is  qualitative.  The  state  is  a  mun* 
dane  institution,  subject  to  all  the  limitations, 
inconveniences  and  passions  of  things  earthly. 
The  state  will  be  ruthless  at  times,  the  state  will 
be  unjust  at  times,  the  state  will  at  times  even 
concede  its  unrighteousness  and  yet  persist  in  the 
accomplishment  of  its  ends.  No  genuine  religion 
nor  honest  church  can  do  this.  The  character  of 
the  institution  will  not  tolerate  a  stooping  to  the 
common  weaknesses  of  man,  the  nature  of  gov- 
ernments will.  In  short,  the  divine  imprint  is  too 
deep  on  true  religion  to  permit  of  such  a  partner- 
ship as  that  of  church  and  state  being  a  fair  or 
workable  arrangement.  A  church,  or  the  officer 
of  a  church,  cannot  successfully  interfere  in 
the  secular  concerns  of  a  commonwealth  without, 
as  the  expression  is,  "meeting  competition/'  Some 
of  the  commonwealth's  competitors  will  be  un- 
scrupulous, a  great  part  of  the  commonwealth 
itself  will  be  unscrupulous;  therefore,  it  will  be 
enough  to  drive  an  honest  church  or  churchman 
to  distraction  to  steer  a  blameless  course  through 
such  a  torrent,  and  still  satisfy  anybody, — and 
still  be  successful. 

In  truth,  if  the  past  be  any  help  to  us,  it  seems 
the  part  of  religion  and  the  church  must  be  ex- 
clusively directive  and  advisory,  never  adminis- 
trative or  executory.  In  the  long  run,  no  matter 
what  religion,  or  the  ministers  of  religion  may 
think  about  it,  it  proves  a  great  mercy  to  religion 
to  have  it  so.  Scarcely  anything  can  be  more 
discomforting  than  to  observe  the  efforts  of  a 
saint  and  a  brigand  to  get  on  amicably  under  the 
same  roof.  Their  mutual  concessions  must  be 
legion,  and  each  concession  calls  for  an  added 
wrench  and  lays  up  a  new  addition  of  uneasiness. 
The  saint  at  every  turn  feels;  his  soul  slipping  to 


80  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

perdition,  while  the  brigand  begins  to  wonder  if 
even  nerves  of  steel  can  for  long  endure  in  such 
a  casuistical  madhouse.  Observe  the  pathos  of 
their  situation.  Jf  the  saint  will  consent  to  par- 
ticipate in  a  slight  murder,  the  brigand  will  not 
only  fast  a  certain  number  of  days,  but  he  will 
impose  this  fast  upon  his  band.  Thus  it  goes 
on,  both  torn,  both  compromised,  both  unhappy. 
It  is  the  old  baffling  aqueous  and  oleaginous  ex- 
periment. 

How  difficult  has  it  ever  been  for  even  the 
true  religion,  when  in  the  secular  saddle,  to  re- 
frain from  being  unjustly  coercive.  And  we  will 
gladly  give  the  reader  leave  to  choose  as  he 
pleases  the  particular  title  of  this  true  religion, 
without  fear  of  imperiling  our  position.  Some 
excellent  devout  man  conceives  this  moral  maxim: 
* 'Truth  and  reality  have  an  inherent  and  intrin- 
sic right  to  be  protected  against  falsehood  and 
error."  Now  if,  girt  with  such  an  engine,  even  the 
upright  have  ever  been  in  the  gravest  danger  of 
falling  into  the  perpetration  of  grievous  injustice, 
how  must  men  fare  when  this  weapon  nerves  the 
arm  of  designing  villainy? 

No  matter  what  marvels,  no  matter  what  ab- 
surdities a  man  or  a  party  of  men  believe  about 
the  Unseen  World,  it  is  enough  that  they  but  seek 
to  enjoy  this  belief  in  peace  and  not  to  forcibly 
impose  it  upon  the  rest  of  society.  They  may, 
indeed,  endeavor  to  persuade  others  to  it,  but 
the  persuasion  must  really  be  persuasion,  not 
veiled  coercion.  Humanly  speaking,  the  grounds 
of  supernatural  data,  if  one  may  be  allowed  the 
expression,  are  too  little  demonstrable  to  warrant 
compelling  anybody  to  their  acceptance,  even 
were  the  doctrine  of  compulsion  in  general,  in 
more  favor  than  it  is.  One  may  have  the  liveliest 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  8i 

faith  in  these  matters  imaginable,  but  he  must  al- 
ways remember  that  at  the  last,  it  is  but  faith. 
And  even  if  we  were  sure,  as  we  may  be,  for  in- 
stance, in  mathematics,  of  the  truth  of  what  we 
hold,  how  can  we  conceive  any  decent  warrant 
for  imposing  it  upon  others  against  their  wills? 
If  God  from  the  beginning  has  left  faith  in  Him 
a  matter  of  free  choice,  if  God  will  let  a  man  save 
himself  or  lose  himself,  according  to  his  pleasure, 
can  not  the  propagators  of  religion  rest  satisfied 
in  this  issue  with  the  divine  wisdom  and  provi- 
dence? 

Of  course  the  same  rule  holds  good  with  regard 
to  irreligion.  If  I  can  show  no  valid  divine  or 
human  commission  to  compel  men  to  religion, 
neither  can  I  show  any  to  compel  them  to  irre- 
ligion. In  fact,  if  any  compelling  at  all  were  justi- 
fiable, the  balance  would  be  a  little  in  favor  of 
the  religionists,  because  their  programme  inclines 
more  toward  what  the  best  of  humanity,  theistic 
or  otherwise,  have  always  thought  laudable  and 
praiseworthy,  than  that  of  the  irreligionists. 

But  in  the  new  philosophy  there  must  be  no 
thought  on  either  side  of  compelling  in  matters 
theological.  We  must  premise  that  such  an  idea 
has  gone  out  of  the  world;  that  it  escaped  some- 
how beyond  the  limits  of  our  sphere  of  gravita- 
tion, and  is  bounding  and  swerving  through  in- 
comprehensible space,  nevermore  to  come  into 
collision  with  any  worlds  which  are  inhabited. 
In  the  new  dispensation  which  we  presuppose,  the 
church  will  not  be  allowed  to  administer  secular 
affairs,  and  the  state  will  not  be  permitted  to 
meddle  in  religious  affairs.  The  state  will  no 
more  harass  the  church  than  it  will  harass  the 
Water  Colour  Society.  Here  and  Hereafter  will 
be  two  distinct  subject  matters  always  kept  clearly 


82  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

apart.  Our  governors  will  assume,  for  all  pur- 
poses of  action,  that  we  do  not  know  and  cannot 
know  demonstrably  what  will  happen  to  a  man 
if  he  contravenes  heaven-made  laws,  but  that  we 
can  and  do  know  what  is  going  to  happen  to  him 
if  he  ignores  man-made  obligations.  But  these 
man-made  obligations  will  be  quite  careful  to  con- 
fine themselves  to  the  knowable  and  demonstra- 
ble. Beyond  this  our  functionaries  will  not  trouble 
themselves.  As  to  what  an  individual  chooses  to 
conceive  as  his  duty  to  a  Superior  Power,  with 
that,  as  long  as  it  does  not  interfere  with  good  cit- 
izenship, the  state  will  not  remotely  concern  itself. 
It  will  be  content  with  establishing  humane,  lib- 
eral, enlightened  regulations  looking  to  the  con- 
duct of  men  here,  not  their  situation  hereafter.  It 
will  not  interest  itself,  either  to  approve  or  dis- 
countenance an  individual's  theological  specu- 
lations or  beliefs  so  long  as  they  do  not  com- 
promise the  action  of  the  state  within  its  proper 
sphere.  Above  all,  it  will  not  be  an  avowed 
enemy  to  religion.  It  will,  on  the  contrary,  re- 
spect and  revere  all  honest  attempts  of  men  to 
raise  themselves  as  far  as  may  be  above  the  base- 
nesses of  their  common  nature,  it  will  cherish 
genuine  piety  as  its  excellent  friend  and  powerful 
ally,  as  the  bright  source  and  inspiration  of  almost 
all  in  human  life  and  human  conduct  which  lifts 
man  above  the  animal  and  the  automaton.  It  will 
regard  true  religion  and  the  pretensions  of  religion 
as  the  interpretation  of  man's  existence  on  this 
doubtful  earth,  (with  its  inevitable  dispropor- 
tionate pains  for  so  many),  in  contentment,  and 
peace  of  mind,  and  grateful  obedience  to  the  in- 
spirations of  an  Unseen  Guide.  Warmly  will  it 
scorn  the  petty  tyranny  of  coercing  a  man's  in- 
tellect in  concerns  sacred  far  beyond  anything 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  83 

with  which  it  has  properly  to  do.  Rather,  it  will 
take  the  academic  ground  of  declining  to  inter- 
fere in  matters,  which,  real  to  the  eyes  of  faith, 
are,  in  physical  formulary,  as  impalpable  as 
shadows.  From  the  thought  of  compelling  a 
citizen  to  profess  what  he  does  not  believe,  it  will 
shrink  as  from  dishonor.  How  can  it  be  inter- 
ested whether  a  man  holds  or  does  not  hold  that 
for  which,  scientifically  speaking,  one  can  furnish 
no  adequate  proof  at  all?  Or,  if  he  might,  what 
warrant  could  it  conceive  for  excursions  into  re- 
gions so  far  beyond  its  necessary  and  legitimate 
province? 

A  soul  of  any  real  enlargement, — and  the 
soul  of  our  state,  if  one  may  so  speak,  will  be  such, 
— must  always  regard  persecution  for  religious 
opinions,  or  coercion  in  regard  to  religious  opin- 
ions, or  any  hag-born  meddling  in  religious 
concerns,  as  perhaps  the  basest  and  meanest  as- 
pect in  which  it  is  possible  for  human  malevolence 
to  exhibit  itself.  And  conversely,  as  was  said  be- 
fore, persecution  for  no  religion  will  be  felt  equally 
as  monstrous  as  persecution  for  a  religion. 

Believers  in  religion,  in  the  good  time  which 
we  like  to  picture  to  ourselves,  will  have  more 
equanimity  than  perhaps  they  do  now;  they  will 
have  more  confidence  in  the  indestructibility  of 
that  which  they  keep  at  heart,  and  which  the 
world  at  certain  moments  has  seemed  willing  to 
do  away  with.  They  will  have  come  to  realize, 
that  for  the  sum  total  of  the  race,  religion  has  a 
permanence  which  is  above  and  beyond  the  care 
its  professors  may  employ  for  it — which  is,  in- 
deed, something  within  itself.  Never  since  man 
has  taken  account  of  himself  has  the  human  heart 
been  able  to  long  endure  without  religion.  It  is, 
in  truth,  as  fundamentally  a  part  of  man's  fibre 


84  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

as  the  inevitable  lower  passions  which  bear  him 
down.  Often,  indeed,  in  moments  of  intoxica- 
tion, he  would  put  it  away  as  inconvenient,  he 
would  be  without  it — but  he  cannot.  If  he  de- 
throne truth,  falsehood  will  take  its  room,  but 
only  for  a  space,  for  truth  will  gradually  work 
about  and  again  stand  compelling  him  with  all 
the  force  of  its  legitimacy,  power  and 
beauty.  Yet  even  in  the  interim  he  will  adore 
something,  he  will  construct  some  kind  of  a  su- 
pernatural— the  one  thing  he  can  not  do  is  to 
endure  a  spiritual  vacuum.  As  we  said,  it  seems 
likely  that  as  the  world  ages,  the  man  of  religion 
will  grow  calmer.  From  a  conviction  born  of  the 
ever  widening  eddy  of  human  experience,  he  will 
at  length  realize  that  religion  always  was  in  the 
world  and  that  it  will  never  be  out  of  the  world. 
He  will  be  ever  more  inclined  to  regard  the  con- 
temners  of  religion  with  charity  and  indulgence, 
as  one  is  led  to  compassionate  even  an  ungen- 
erous opponent  who  is  doomed  to  fail.  And  in 
this  happy  age,  men  who  are  not  believers  will 
come  to  see  the  absurdity  and  littleness  of  hound- 
ing a  fellow  being  "beyond  the  stars*'  so  to  speak. 
Intelligent  mankind  will  grow  heartily  ashamed 
of  intolerance,  will  shrink  from  it  as  something 
degraded,  brutish,  illiberal,  mortifying.  Then  in- 
deed will  our  earth  begin  to  take  on  the  face  of  a 
free  and  happy  landscape.  Religionists  no  longer 
seeking  by  force  of  arms  to  rivet  the  iron  mask 
of  their  particular  formularies  on  the  believing 
wayfarer;  and  for  those  preferring  it,  the  pursuit 
of  free-thinking  as  unhindered  as  the  air  they 
breathe. 

Truly,  nothing  is  more  astonishing  to  him  who 
is  elevated  above  the  mysterious  bigotry  of  creed, 
than  that  this  ugly  and  weird  phenomenon  should 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  85 

have  been  cast  for  so  imposing  a  part  upon  the 
mundane  stage.  Of  all  the  property  which  a  man 
might  well  be  left  in  undisturbed  possession  of, 
his  property  in  another  world  surely  may  be  al- 
lowed the  most  obvious.  How  could  an  abuse 
as  ferocious  as  the  desire  to  thwart  one's  kind  in 
so  sacred  a  private  right  ever  have  thus  gained 
upon  reasonable  beings!  But  in  our  imaginary 
drama  it  is  over.  The  curtain  falls  on  this  san- 
guinary act,  the  bills  have  been  withdrawn,  it  will 
not  be  again  performed. 

Yet  it  may  scarcely  be  denied  that  in  handing 
over  to  the  care  of  the  state  the  concerns  of  cul- 
ture, certain  difficulties  are  encountered.  Such  an 
instance  presents  itself  in  the  conduct  of  state 
schools.  In  the  opinion  of  many  excellent  and 
wise  men,  religious  instruction  should  be  supplied 
daily  along  with  profane  learning  in  any  academy 
the  ultimate  end  of  which  is  to  produce  virtuous 
as  well  as  cultivated  men  and  women.  Moral  ex- 
cellence without  a  theology  is,  they  argue,  at  least 
for  the  greater  part  of  mankind,  a  mere  abstrac- 
tion. Ethics,  so  they  believe,  in  times  of  severe 
stress,  exerts  far  less  restraining  influence  upon 
humanity  than  the  exhortations  and  commands 
of  a  verile  religion — that  the  true  science  of  con- 
duct is  not  ethics  but  rather  religion.  They  hold, 
as  Plato  held  long  ago,  that  we  have  within  us 
a  many  headed  beast  and  a  man.  That  whatever 
progress  is  possible  toward  starving  the  beast  is 
best  achieved  with  the  aid  of  religion.  They  main- 
tain further,  that  in  all  other  sciences  it  is  a 
tolerably  received  maxim  that  a  daily  application 
to  them  is  the  surest  way  to  their  mastery,  and  that 
the  fashion  in  which  theology  is  left  to  be  investi- 
gated on  but  one  day  in  a  week,  if  at  all,  would 
almost  go  to  prove  we  are  determined  not  to 


86  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

acquire  proficiency  in  it.  Moreover,  beyond  the 
strict  sphere  of  its  practical  utility,  they  are  apt 
to  urge  yet  other  claims  for  the  admission  of 
religion  as  a  branch  of  study  in  any  adequate  pro- 
gramme of  intermediate  or  university  education. 
Theology  and  the  evidences  of  religion  they  hold 
to  be  a  liberal  department  of  human  knowledge 
and  are  persuaded  that  neither  in  ancient  nor  in 
modern  times  was  any  distinguished  education 
ever  imparted  ^vhere  these  subjects  were  divorced 
from  the  curriculum. 

How  freely,  they  say,  was  the  politest  educa- 
tion of  Athenian  antiquity  conversant  with  the- 
ology in  the  teachings  of  her  most  illustrious 
philosophers!  And  what  lends  more  eclat  or  at- 
tractiveness to  the  universities  of  the  middle  ages, 
even  at  this  distance,  than  the  enthusiasm  with 
which  in  this  department  such  grandiose  and  lofty 
speculation  was  pursued. 

An  education  exclusively  of  the  laboratory  has, 
indeed,  its  penalties,  though  it  be  regarded  but 
from  the  aesthetic,  and  not  the  moral  side.  It  is 
apt  to  be  something  harsh,  soulless,  uninspired — - 
in  short,  it  is  apt  to  lack  distinction. 

This  philosophy  is  perhaps  somewhat  new  to 
America,  but  if  time  should  show  the  champions 
of  it  to  be  in  the  right,  our  ideal  of  a  strong  and 
expansive  state  action,  with  at  the  same  time 
the  fullest  separation  of  the  Church  and  the  State, 
can  readily  accommodate  itself  to  such  a  view. 
Already  abroad,  in  state  schools,  religious  instruc- 
tion in  several  faiths  is  supplied  during  certain 
hours  of  the  day  to  all  who  wish  to  receive  it. 
The  teachers  of  religion  are  selected  by  eccle- 
siastical authority  presiding  in  the  several  denom- 
inations concerned.  It  has  been  found  that  where 
any  serious  degree  of  enlightenment  prevails  no 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  87 

incompatibility  is  involved  in  thus  satisfying  the 
demand  for  moral  training  even  in  populations  of 
varying  and  opposed  beliefs. 

Doubtless  what  has  alarmed  so  many  in  the  idea 
of  the  central  government's  control  of  public  edu- 
cation is  the  fact  that  some  countries  are  for 
making  attendance  at  state  schools  compulsory 
upon  all  the  inhabitants  of  school  age.  This  pol- 
icy, of  course,  is  an  easy  door  for  tyranny.  Far 
be  it  from  us  to  contemplate  any  such  programme. 
All  we  desiderate  is  that  any  public  education  shall 
be  in  the  hands  of  a  central  authority.  Those 
who  prefer  a  private  education,  an  education  of 
their  own  contriving,  are  to  enjoy  the  completest 
liberty  to  pursue  it.  What  we  contend  for  is  but 
to  have  the  means  at  hand  for  the  forming  of  an 
intellectual  elite  of  the  body  (larger  perhaps  than 
one  may  fancy)  of  those  who  wish  to  be  of  an 
intellectual  elite.  The  romantic  notion  of  making 
the  sum-total  of  any  population  an  elite  never 
entered  our  dreams.  We  are,  alas,  but  able  to 
think  in  prose. 

The  state  then,  as  we  conceive  it,  will  carry  no 
terrors  for  any  one's  religion.  In  a  modern  repre- 
sentative government  how  can  any  just  concept 
of  expansive  state  action  start  such  childish  fears, 
reminiscent  of  the  mythic  terrors  of  the  nursery; 
for  is  not  the  state  but  the  people?  It  is  not  some 
mysterious  engine  of  thralldom  riveted  to  a  cowed 
and  shivering  population.  The  state,  vested  with 
large  powers,  is  thereby  only  the  more  highly  in- 
telligent servant  of  the  people,  but  it  is  still  the 
servant.  If,  in  modern  society,  the  state  is  at 
times  observed  to  be  unjust  toward  religion,  it  is, 
in  truth,  only  the  too  immediate  reflection  of  the 
attitude  of  the  population  at  large  toward  religion. 

Some  are  fond  of  pointing  to  the  example  of 


88  THE  WILL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

France  and  exclaiming,  "With  a  representation  of 
thirty-nine  millions  of  Catholics  out  of  a  total 
population  of  forty  millions,  see  how  the 
doctrine  of  the  predominance  of  the  state, 
drives,  in  that  unhappy  land,  a  Catholic 
from  pillar  to  post!"  But  does  any  intelligent 
observer  give  credit  to  such  an  imputation? 
Does  he  for  a  moment  believe  that  the 
position  of  Catholics  in  France  is  not  what  a 
majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  France  wish  it  to  be? 
Doubtless  the  explanation  of  whatever  apparent 
contrariety  there  is  may  be  summed  up  in  this 
wise:  Initially,  probably  a  good  many  less  than 
thirty-nine  millions  of  the  population  of  France 
are  enthusiastic  Catholics.  Then  again,  the  sep- 
aration of  Church  and  State  in  France  has  been 
a  long,  delicate  and  difficult  business.  It  was 
foreign  to  the  genius  of  the  nation's  early  insti- 
tutions, but  when  once  a  society  has  decided  that 
all  cannot  be  of  one  mind  on  religious  questions, 
that  separation  becomes  imperative.  In  France, 
to  effect  it,  a  great  wrench  was  required,  and  it 
seems  that  Frenchmen  have  been  willing  to  swing 
the  pendulum  a  good  many  degrees  to  the  oppo- 
site side  with  not  much  other  view  than  to  at 
length  achieve  the  vertical.  But  let  not  critics  of 
state  action  forget  that  the  majority  in  France  is 
getting  what  it  wants,  as  it  always  does  in  modern 
representative  governments,  and  if  enthusiastic 
Catholics  fail  to  constitute  the  majority,  is  that 
any  indictment  of  the  beatitude  of  the  sway  o* 
numbers?  Not  that  even  a  triumphant  majority 
has  any  very  clear  commission  to  harry  and  per- 
secute an  inoffensive  minority,  still,  in  practical 
politics  one  must  draw  the  line  somewhere,  and 
modern  society  has  drawn  it  at  the  prevalence  of 
the  will  of  the  majority.  But  France  is  far  too  in- 


THE  WILL  OF  THE 'PEOPLE    '•* :- '-fo^ 

telligent  and  generous  to  persevere  for  long  in 
injustice  towards  Catholics  or  those  of  any  other 
creed.  And  so  likewise  must  be  any  other  truly 
enlightened  commonwealth. 

The  state,  then,  let  us  repeat,  with  such  powers 
as  we  would  have  reserved  to  it,  will  be  some- 
thing officially  uncognizant  of,  rather  than  inimical 
to,  religion.  It  is  in  an  abundant  faith  that  in  the 
improving  condition  of  mankind  such  an  ideal 
may  be  realized  that  it  is  so  uncompromisingly 
set  forth.  We  have  said  more  than  once  before 
it  is  our  matured  conviction  that  the  ends  of  cul- 
ture cannot  adequately  be  achieved  but  with  the 
assistance  of  the  strong  arm  of  the  state,  and  the 
fruits  of  culture  we  are  well  persuaded  are  essen- 
tial to  the  happiness  of  man  in  this  present  life. 
But,  great  as  are  the  blessings  of  mental  enlarge- 
ment, the  blessings  of  religion  are  greater;  they 
are  essential  not  only  to  happiness  in  this  life  but 
in  an  existence  which,  it  is  the  trust  of  millions, 
dwarfs  into  inexpressible  insignificance  our  pres- 
ent sojourning.  Consequently  the  reluctance  of 
those  who  hesitate  to  entrust  plenipotentiary  pow- 
ers to  the  state,  because  in  the  operation  religious 
liberty  might  be  endangered,  is  by  no  means  to  be 
derided;  on  the  contrary,  were  their  objection 
less  easily  encountered,  it  would  justly  engage 
the  serious  attention  of  intelligent  and  upright  men 
everywhere. 

But  is  this  difficulty  not  one  which  might,  indeed, 
occur,  but  which,  quite  as  certainly,  need  not 
occur?  And  this  because  the  state  in  a  repre- 
sentative government,  even  when  acting  most 
directly  and  with  peculiar  powers,  is,  in  major 
concerns,  as  solicitous  of  the  approval  of  its  mas- 
ters as  the  state  working  mediately  and  loosely. 
And  if  the  state  prove  tyrannous  it  must  be  at 


90  THE  4WiLL  *OF  THE  PEOPLE 

bottom  the  will  of  the  people  it  is  thus  deformed. 
And  it  if  be  the  good  pleasure  of  the  majority  that 
bigotry  and  oppression  in  religion  stalk  through 
the  land,  it  matters  little  indeed  whether  the 
statutory  powers  of  the  state  be  great  or  small, 
intolerance  will  possess  the  earth. 

There  is  no  legislative  panacea  for  passion,  in- 
justice, narrowness  of  mind,  barbarity;  these 
moist  and  fatal  growths  yield  only  to  the  purifying 
sun  of  Intelligence.  For  their  disappearance  from 
amongst  men  one  can  only  wait  in  patience  and 
good  hope,  his  prayer  for  himself  and  his  fellow 
wayfarers  being  epitomized  in  those  sublime  last 
words  of  the  great  Goethe,  "Light,  more  light!" 


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